150 
Cultivation of Coniferous Trees. 
the sudden change or withdrawal of this auxiliary sustenance. 
A much better mode of aiding their establishment in their new 
abodes is to pulverise well with the spade the earth of the pits 
into which they are planted. The bottom earth of these pits 
shcnld be well loosened and broken, to encourage a free and 
steady progress in the roots' development, and to enable them to 
strike deeper and to take that hold of the ground which is their 
best safeguard against the fury of the gales to which they may 
be exposed. 
Independently, however, of these general causes which operate 
against the successful introduction and cultivation of the newer 
pines and trees, there are other reasons which frequently in 
particular instances account for many cases of failure. But as 
they are rather to be found in the individual treatment of the 
species or plant itself, than in any deficiency in hardihood 
natural to it, we do not feel warranted in the present paper, in 
mentioning such causes in detail. We shall only briefly glance 
at them ; they are practices which we have no doubt time will 
remedy, as they consist principally in the modes of propa- 
gation. 
For example, many of the finer conifers grow readily from 
grafts, layers, or cuttings. Picea nobilis, Finns ponderom, Cedrus 
deodara, Cupressus lawsoniana, Welhngtonea gigantea, and many 
others, are reared and increased by these means. Plants formed 
in this way, however, are never so fine as specimens, nor so 
robust in habit, as those grown from seed. Another vvay in 
which sickly and unsatisfactory plants are also procured, and 
which in like manner leads to disappointing results in after 
years, and aids in bringing discredit upon their genera, is by 
raising many of the varieties from home-grown cones. We have 
heard gardeners and foresters boast that these new pines were in 
some instances '"'•fruiting freely" with them; and we know ex- 
amples of the Abies douglassi, and others, annually producing 
cones in this country. At Fingask (Perthshire), for example, 
the Cupressus lawsoniana, growing in garden loam, and about 
7 feet high at that time, bore cones in 1862. At Durris 
(Kincardineshire), the Abies doiiglassi was planted from seed in 
184:0, and is now above 50 feet high, and produces annually 
" loads of cones." These, however, have germinated few plants. 
Again, in the same pinetum, Ficea nobilis also planted in 1840^ 
now about 36 feet high, has borne five crops of cones, from 
which in all about 8000 plants have been raised.* At Madres- 
* Since this sheet -was sent to the press, we have learned that this splendid 
specimen was blown down in the gale of January, 1868. It had, however, been 
happily photographed the previous season, and the plate presented to the Scottish, 
Arboricultural Society in Edinburgh. 
