of the grafts took, and I already flattered myself with having 
made an important discovery ; on the contrary, it was not long 
before I perceived, that this method, so far from promoting ve¬ 
getation, only tended to check it. 
It is good not to be too hasty in suppressing the shoots 
which come out near the graft or bud ; this should be put off 
till the sap, by working a passage into the adoptive channels, 
has decidedly secured to the graft the nourishment of the 
stock. A contrary practice very often occasions the loss of 
the one and the other. 
There is an expeditious method of increasing the number of 
many sorts of trees, which is, in the beginning of spring, to 
make a strong ligature round one of the well grown shoots of 
the last year, and, if possible, just above a nodus or smutty 
excrescence, taking care to cover the ligature sufficiently with 
a composition of fat earth and cow dung. The strangulation, 
by causing a swelling and intercepting the course of the sap, 
obliges the shoot to strike root that very year. In the autumn 
or the next spring, it is separated from the parent plant, and 
thus this process is neither attended with the risk of the delay 
of grafting. 
It is said that the Chinese have a practice very much like 
the above. They surround the lower part of a bough with a 
quantity of unctuous earth, and then suspend a jug of water, 
which, by dripping over it, keeps it moist; the bough then 
strikes root in the earth, and is fit to be cut and transplanted 
the next winter. 
One may, however, conclude, that trees raised in this mam 
ner, are in some measure cuttings, and must necessarily partake 
along with them of the same disadvantages. 
The nature of layers is so generally known, that it would be 
useless to dwell upon a description of them here. 
CHAPTER 
