246 
CULTURE OF MELONS. 
have fermented for live weeks. All Mr. Harrison’s crops of cucum¬ 
bers, after the first crop, are.raised and perpetuated in a similar man¬ 
ner from cuttings, and as may easily be conceived, the advantages 
are proportionally great.” 
Such is Mr. Loudon’s report of Mr. Harrison’s practice, and I can 
testify the witness of the last remark concerning cucumbers. I 
therefore intend shortly, if agreeable to you, sir, to insert a paper on 
the details of an actual experiment during the last summer. It only 
now remains to close this article by a cursory enquiry into the phy- 
sio^gical cause of the early and great fertility of cuttings. What I 
adduce must, to a certain extent, be hypothetical; and therefore, I 
am open to correction from any one who can prove me to be in error. 
Without insisting upon the fact, that the buds of all plants, or the 
germs of their future shoots, are formed at the earliest stage, wherein 
each and every part is produced; there are many circumstances 
which lead me to conclude, that besides these growing buds, there is 
a multitude of others, which lie masked or dormant for an indefinite 
period. In annual plants there can exist, I imagine, but little ra¬ 
tional doubt upon the subject. Now, as long as the principle of 
growth proceeds in uninterrupted progiess, each leader advances in 
length, and its roots simultaneously ramify into the soil beneath: 
such is the progress of the unspotted, unpruned melon. Little fruit 
is produced, and that at a very advanced period of its life. When, 
however, a cutting is taken off from the end of a shoot, and the shoot 
itself is pruned back, a very different state is produced. With res¬ 
pect to the cutting in particular, when planted in a bed of warm ge¬ 
nial earth, or in a pot plunged therein, the effects produced are very 
extraordinary. The electrical agency of light is, indeed, equally 
exerted upon its terminal point and the few remaining leaves, as it 
was while the cutting remained upon the shoot, but this influence 
now operates in the developement of new members; and if the cut¬ 
ting succeed, that is, if the vital principle in it be sufficient to sus¬ 
tain, and to second the force of the energy exerted by the great na¬ 
tural agents, light and air, (aided by the genial moisture of the soil 
about the lower extremity,) roots will be protruded partly from the 
matter of the returning elaborated sap, but chiefly from the process 
sent down by the previously latent, but now sprouting buds. Thus 
several systems of life that had remained quiescent, are stimulated, 
and called into action, and among these, many cannot fail to be 
fruitful. Even from the stems of the mother plant, the experience 
of all time has evinced, that fructiferous laterals are sent forth after 
the main shoots have been cut back; and hence the origin of those 
