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PLANTS IN POTS AND MANAGEMENT OF CUTTINGS. 
When persons attempt to repot a plant, they but too often press and work about 
the old ball, to clear off and loosen the soil, then, after putting- into a larger pot 
some common garden mould, they place the disturbed roots upon it, fill the 
surrounding- space with the same mould, shake or strike the pot, water the surface, 
and bring- the plant into a sitting-room, or perhaps place it in the open air on some 
bed of earth. This is a supposed case, it is true, but if it do not exactly apply, 
certain it is that the nurseryman employs soils, which his experience teaches him 
will suit the constitution of his plants, and bring- them to a showy saleable condi- 
tion. The purchaser is unable to obtain a compost, or even a pure loam, or vegetable 
earth of a similar character, and thus an ung-enial medium is applied unskilfully 
about the roots ; while the foliage of the plant is exposed to every inequality of 
light, air, heat, and water, which belongs to a sitting-room. If garden mould be 
used, or if the pot be placed in a border, worms are liable to be introduced, or to find 
ingress to the roots, and then woe to the plant ; for, to say nothing of the direct 
injury they may occasion, those sappers gradually undermine the roots, perforate 
the soil, and make it a complete gallery by their contortive evolutions. Thus they 
produce all the evil consequences which result from loose and incompact potting, 
and also defeat the attempts to furnish a proper supply of water ; for the holes they 
bore are just so many channels through which the fluid passes, without moistening 
the body of the soil. 
The remarks on the treatment of cuttings are just and correct; we only wish to 
add a word on two material points. Whenever sand (clean writing, or silver sand, 
or pure siliceous earth, free from adhesive matters) is employed, it will not be amiss 
to saturate it with water before it be put on the soil in the pot; it will then act as 
a quicksand, embracing and closing upon the cutting, and entirely excluding the 
air from the heel ; so prepared, it is readily kept moist and free, whereas sand, if 
applied dry, receives water with great difficulty. In taking off and preparing a 
cutting, we have frequently found it better to cut, not through the joint, but a trifle 
below it ; this will leave the part completely perfect. At every joint a bud or 
system of life exists, and this it is which in ordinary cases propels the first radical 
processes ; by not injuring the vital point we act prudently, and on the same 
principles as when in " budding " a tree or shrub we carefully retain the eye of the 
bud, for without that there can be no success. The importance of buds or eyes is 
always kept in view by a practised gardener; but it must not be overlooked that in 
every case where the peculiar state of the wood, as to age or ripeness, which the 
individual plant required, is equally at command, a slip will succeed better than an 
ordinary cutting, because it abounds with embryos of buds at its base, and these are 
most active in the production of those minute fibrous processes, which in the first 
instance establish the connexion between the cellular alburnum of the infant plant 
and its earthy medium of nutrition. We are indebted for the hint to a nurseryman 
of eminence, when conversing upon the means of propagating Gardenia ; the rule 
is not without exception, but it is of the first consequence, and should be always 
retained in the mind. 
