135 
purposes designed ; aUvaj s recollecting that a full exposure to 
the air, in composts of every description, will render them most 
salubrious to every species of trees, shrubs, plants, and flowers. 
159 White Sand, its utility. In the business of planting 
cuttings in the open ground of the more tender evergreen trees 
and shrubs, under hand-glasses, in the autumn; as well as the 
more hardy greenhouse plants, such as the myrtle, fuchsia, 
rose, cistus, germander, &c. no unmixed soil whatever can be 
found to bear a comparison with the finest white sand ; as cut- 
tings planted therein will be far the most secure from mouldi- 
ness and damp, throughout the autumnal and winter seasons; 
during which periods, the pots in which they are planted, gen- 
erally remain standing up to their rims in the common ground, 
as the greatest preservative from frost ; lint in which situation 
they are more exposed to damp, than if standing on the surface 
of the ground. Although but little more. than a knob, or 
swelling protuberance at the foot of the cuttings, can be ex- 
pected to be formed during the first autumn and winter; yet on 
the advance of spring, they w ill early make roots, even without 
the addition of any other soil or compost to the sand, to pro- 
mote their growth; These young plants should be potted off, 
or transplanted in some way, as soon as they have formed suffi- 
cient roots. Immense (juantities (from planting small cuttings) 
may thus be annually propagated, by means of covering them 
with full sized single hand-glasses: but this process will only 
extend to such as are evergreen; and amongst them not to such 
as are resinous, as firs, pines, &c.: these, however, producing as 
they do, abundance of ripe seeds in favourable seasons, we are 
less anxious to propagate them by cuttings. In the propagation, 
by this process, of the trees and shrubs alluded to, it must be 
recollected, that the sand is to be considered as not farther essen- 
tial than merely to cause or promote a growth in the cuttings, 
sufficient for their transplantation; as on their being removed 
to another situation, in the next stage of the process, a mixture 
of suitable soil, w ith a proportion of sand only will be requisite, 
e are not asserting that yellow sand will not equally apply in 
both cases of planting cuttings of hardy evergreen trees and 
shrubs, both by summer planting in the ojien exposure, and 
autumn-planting under hand-glasses; but, in all the experi- 
ments we have witnessed, and throughout the whole of our 
AUCTABIVM. fUync« OD Soils aad Composts* 
