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PROPAGATION BY GRAFTING. 
Of all the traits essentially native to the national mind of Britain, there is 
none which stands out in holder relief than the inclination to refine, improve, and 
extend the inventions and discoveries that are from time to time gaining publicity. 
Original genius, in a strict sense of the term, is comparatively rare ; but its 
deficiency is atoned for by the almost universal proneness to amplify existing intel- 
ligence, and to carry forward its operation to matters which would never have 
entered the thoughts of those from whom it emanated. It is thus in all the 
sciences that affect the welfare of our race ; the evolution of any new principle 
therein being gradually but fully brought to bear on correlative arts. 
Horticulture is not exempted from the rule here laid down. Wherever an 
increased knowledge of scientific laws enables its votaries to adopt novel modes of 
conducting its processes, these are immediately seized upon by the multitudes of 
minor culturists, and from the numerous phases in which they are viewed, each 
individual is able to add a little to the general stock of information concerning them, 
and to push their agency beyond the point which had been attained by the primary 
promulgators. By the extensive circulation of professional works, and the means 
they afford for making known the results of any experiments, those undertaken 
with success by the most assiduous cultivators are given to the world at various 
periods, and from these a philosophical author gleans the most important facts, and 
educes additional principles, on which, again, gardeners may proceed in a further 
course of improvement. 
It is in this way mainly, and not by the elicitation of new agents, or the 
discovery of elementary causes, that the progress of gardening is rendered constant 
and unfluctuating. The propagation of plants, as originally effected by nature 
through the dissemination of seeds, was, without question, carried on by man in 
the same manner during the infancy of human art. An observation of their spon- 
taneous distribution would lead to the practice of sowing them in places where 
they did not naturally thrive, or where a uniform crop of any particular sort was 
desired. This, therefore, is decidedly the most simple mode of artificial multipli- 
cation. 
In tilling the soil around shrubs, it may have happened that their lowermost 
branches have been partly plunged in the earth so as to leave only their extremities 
apparent above the surface ; and when, in the effectuation of a like duty in the 
following year, these branches have been found to have extruded roots, a notion 
would at once be given of the method of increase by layers. At a more advanced 
era, an accidental disruption of the bark of shoots so layered, and a notice of the 
circumstance that roots were produced more freely from that point, particularly if 
it were near a bud, has most likely suggested the incision of layered branches at 
their nodes, which is now so general. 
VOL. VII.— —NO. LXXXI. D D 
