242 
OX THE COILING SYSTEM OF TINES. 
December. January, or February. We repeat it. that we know , from 
our own individual experience, that perfectly ripened fruit may be 
produced by such a branch within five or six months after it has been 
introduced into a stove, the pot being filled with light turfy loam, with 
or without stimulating manures, and plunged into a gentle leaf-bed. 
But while we thus uphold the possibility of effecting so extraordinary 
a process, we must candidly avow that we greatly fear nine out of 
every ten attempts will prove utterly abortive, and that for several 
reasons:—first and foremost, the sap or vital fluids retained in the 
system of the amputated branch, be that old or young, (and certainly 
one which includes two, three, or four feet of an old-spurred rod, with 
an annual short-jointed bearing shoot, with prominent eyes, two or 
three feet long, is to be preferred,) is not sufficient to bring to full 
development and maturity those processes which are indispensable to 
fertility, unless an extraordinary volume of rootlets be rapidly pro¬ 
truded ; and this great desideratum cannot reasonably be anticipated 
under any modes of ordinary treatment;—a failure, therefore, must 
attend the experiments of most persons ; and, as man is naturally 
impatient, much bitterness of feeling is but too apt to succeed to 
disappointed hopes. 
Secondly, Mr. Mearns has made it an especial condition that all the 
eyes or buds of that part of the branch which is to be coiled under the 
soil, are to be blinded—that is, cut entirely away. In this he has lost 
sight of the efficiency of the buds, and has adopted the very method 
which, of all others, would tend to defeat the object that he has in 
view. Buds are the origin of roots ; and it may be safely asserted, 
that, with very few exceptions, cuttings deprived of these systems of 
life must fail to establish themselves in the soil: in fact, there are 
abundance of facts which tend to prove that buds—those of the vine 
particularly so—do not only produce Toots a little below their points 
of junction with the stem, but, if placed only a few inches below the 
surface of the soil, actually become roots themselves. It was feared 
that, were all the buds left on the coiled stem, a forest of young shoots 
would be thrown up, which could not fail to prove antagonists to the 
principle of growth in the eyes of the single annual shoot intended to 
develope leaves and fruit; but the idea was purely hypothetical, for, 
as has been already premised, the greater number of deeply-buried 
buds must and would assume the form and office of roots. A few, 
indeed—those which would be placed near the surface—might break as 
shoots, and rise into the light ; but they would be productive of a 
corresponding system of fibrous radicles, and might be removed after 
tliev had grown three inches high. We removed several vines from 
• c. o 
