CHAP. IV.] 
LAYERS. 
73 
moist atmosphere, having a tendency to throw 
out roots from their joints, the idea of making 
layers must have very early occurred to 
gardeners. Where the roots are thrown out 
naturally, wherever a joint of the shoot 
touches the moist earth, (as is the case with 
h 
some of the kinds of verbena, which only re¬ 
quire pegging down to make them form new 
plants,) layers differ very little from runners; 
but layers, properly so called, are when the 
art of the gardener has been employed to 
make plants throw out roots when they 
would not have done so naturally. The 
most common method of doing this is to cut 
half through, and slit upwards, a shoot from 
a growing plant, putting a bit of twig or pot¬ 
sherd between the separated parts; and then 
to peg down the shoot, so as to bury the 
joint nearest to the wound in the earth; 
when the returning sap, being arrested in its 
progress to the main root, will accumulate at 
the joint, to which it will afford such abun¬ 
dance of nourishment, as to induce it to, throw 
out a mass of fibrous roots, and to send up a 
leading shoot. 
