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LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 
Propagating by cuttings is an easy and generally successful practice. 
.Some share of practical skill is required in making choice of the cut¬ 
tings, because some strike roots best when the shoots are young and 
tender, and others will not strike at all while young and succulent. 
Heaths belong to the first description, and camellias to the second ; the 
latter can only succeed, as cuttings, when the young shoots have ceased 
growth, and have acquired a somewhat firm woody consistence. There 
are also some plants whose cuttings must be only what the old gardener 
calls “ half-ripened,” that is, neither succulent nor woody, in which 
state they strike roots most readily ; the genus Clethra is one of this 
description. A great majority of greenhouse plants, however, readily 
strike root by cuttings, without regard being had to these punctilios, 
provided the cuttings are properly prepared, planted in sand, and 
placed in hotbed heat under a striking-glass. Cuttings of the roots 
will sometimes succeed when no proper shoots of the top can be had. 
Propagating greenhouse plants by layers is sometimes had recourse 
to with favourite kinds, which do not root from cuttings nor succeed 
by grafting. This is by layering some of the shoots of the head into 
pots of proper soil raised on a stage round the plant. The base of the 
shoot is hooked down on the surface of the soil in which the layer is to 
be struck; the point of the shoot is raised with one hand, and held 
towards the stem of the mother plant; with a keen pen-knife in the 
other, a thin slice or tongue of the bark and wood is severed, but not 
cut off from the shoot, and this wounded part is laid on a little furrow 
made to receive it, embedded in white sand, and afterwards covered 
with about half an inch of earth, keeping the extremity raised in the 
air. New fibres are produced from the incision, and when these 
have taken sufficient hold of the soil, the layer is separated from the 
parent. 
Greenhouse plants may be propagated by grafting. This operation 
is chiefly performed on orange-trees, camellias, &c., and usually for 
increasing the best varieties, by placing them on stocks of the common 
or single sorts. The mode of grafting is that called inarching ; that 
is, the young stock is placed near to the sort sought to be increased ; a 
shoot of the latter is brought to touch some smooth part of the stem of 
the former; a slice of the bark of each at the point of contact is cut 
away, and the two wounds are closed together, and there made fast by 
a ligature of matting, and clayed. When a union has taken place, the 
top of the stock is cut off, and also the base of the graft, leaving the 
top of the latter upon its new stem. Plants are also increased by 
division of the root, and sometimes by suckers. 
I have noticed these different modes of propagation in this place. 
