October and it is during those months that propagating and plant- 
ing can be performed most successfully and with least trouble. 
Marcottage. 
Marcottage is the niost commonly practised system of propaga- 
tion adopted by Chinese and other Asiatics in this Colony for in- 
creasing and perpetuating choice varieties of fruits and flowers. 
Jt is also largely adopted by European planters forobtaining plants 
ot gutta rambong” (Ficus elastica) the saving in time as compared 
to raising them from seeds being considerable. The way in which 
this is generally done is to remove a narrow strip of bark at the 
point where it is wished to obtain roots and to wrap around the 
spot a quantity of clay, coco-nut fibre, moss, or some other material 
that can be kept moist until roots are emitted. There is, however, 
a variation of this method, and one specially adopted for quickly 
looting “rambong”, and that is, instead of removinga strip of bark 
to cut the shoot nearly half through drawing the knife in an 
upward direction for about an inch or an inch and a-half and to put 
some damp clay inside and around the cut covering the whole with 
coco-nut fibre. By this means roots are very quickly produced pro- 
vided the bandage is never allowed to get dry. Some kinds *of 
plants will root in the course of ten days or a fortnight while 
others take months. The principal point to be observed is never 
to let the material that forms the bandage get dry. 
New method of propagating Gutta Percha Trees. 
A new and decidedly clever way of propagating Gutta Percha 
trees, (Pa ? aquium sp.) and which does not exactly come under any 
of the previously described methods, the credit of which is due to 
Mr. Burchard, a planter in Sumatra, consists in laying down in 
a horizontal position young saplings the size of a lead pencil, or a 
little larger, until they make shoots at right angles to the stem 
three or four inches in length. The stem is then cut clean through 
at a distance of about one and a-half inches on either side of the 
shoot and the cutting inserted in clayey soil and placed in a damp 
cool place until rooted. Gutta Percha trees are exceedingly diffi- 
cult to propagate by any means except seeds and these are difficult 
to get. _ In fact this is the only practical way f know of and we 
have tried thousands of cuttings in various ways. Unfortunately 
its application on a large scale depends on a supply of small sap- 
lings which are only obtainable in places where formerly there 
were seed-bearing trees and where the saplings have remained 
suppressed under the shade of other trees. 
VITALITY OF SEEDS. 
Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer and Professor Dewar have shown 
us that the vitality of protoplasm is not impaired by the almost in- 
conceivably low temperature of liquid hydrogen. Dr. HENRY Dixon, 
of Trinity College, Dublin, has recently been experimenting in the 
