378 



PARKS AND PLEASURE-GROUNDS. 



Other form. In grafting, the stock should be of a 

 vigorous and allied species. We found that while Mo- 

 rinda flourished on the spruce, it merely lived and 

 dwindled on the Scotch fir. The scion should be taken, 

 if possible, from the point of the leading shoot of an 

 upper lateral branch ; inattention to this precaution has 

 been the cause of many failures in grafting. We have 

 seen good plants of P. Deodara and Morinda formed 

 from cuttings; and we should suppose that the same 

 method might succeed with various other of the small- 

 leaved species. In most plants, however, propagated 

 by grafts or cuttings, some attention and skill is re- 

 quired, to throw, by judicious pruning, the main strength 

 of the tree towards the leading shoot. After aU, seed- 

 lings wiU always be justly preferred. Hitherto many 

 young pines have been grown in pots. This has arisen 

 partly from the great demand for rare species, partly 

 from the idea, which is more or less correct, that some 

 of these are tender when young, and partly also from 

 the facility with which, when grown in pots, they can 

 be transmitted to distant parts of the country at any 

 season. These supposed advantages are often sadly 

 counterbalanced by the early contortion of the roots, 

 and the consequent overthrow of the trees, in later years, 

 by strong winds, a disaster by far too common in Pine- 

 tums. When put, at first, into very small pots — which 

 are often not more than two inches in diameter — the 

 roots become matted and twisted round the interior of 

 the pot ; and this process may be repeated at each suc- 

 cessive shifting, till the roots have assumed the form of 

 a bird^s nest, and the upper part of the plants have been 

 in a great measure stunted. They, are frequently trans- 

 ferred to the open ground without any ef&cient at- 



