138 
THE CULTIVATOR, 
people, and with a fertile territory embracing all climates, we cannot fail, 
with suitable incitements, to rival any and all other countries in the great 
work of improvement and civilization. 
Well conducted public Fairs signally contribute to these results. Im¬ 
pressed with these views, the public, for nine successive years, have 
countenanced, cherished and supported the Exhibitions of the American 
Institute as their favorite institution, and we trust they will continue with 
their accustomed zeal to cherish and sustain it. 
The farmer is invited to exhibit his useful implements, and the rare, 
curious and extraordinary productions of his agriculture culture. To the 
manufacturer and artist, we look for specimens of the choice productions 
of the factory and the workshop; and the innumerable varieties of taste and 
genius, mingled, as usual, with the ornamental and delicate workmanship 
of female hands. Appropriate places will be provided for all the varieties 
from every department of industry, whether minute or bulky, natural or 
artificial. Suitable preparations will also be made for enlivening the 
scene with the animating influences of moving machinery. 
The friends of National Improvement throughout the country, are re¬ 
spectfully invited to join in this anniversary celebration of Industry and 
the Arts. 
Managers- —T. B. Wake nan, Adoniram Chandler, Martin E. Thomp¬ 
son, John Mason, Edward T. Backhouse, James Hamilton, E. D. Plimp¬ 
ton, W. P. Disosway, Timothy Dewey, George Bacon, Dudley Marvin, 
John Sampson, of New-York; William Halsey, James Miller, Stephen 
Dod, of Newark, New-Jersey; Jeremiah Johnson, of Brooklyn, L. I. 
OUTLINE OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF HORTICULTURE. 
BY JOHN BINDLEY, F. R. S., &C. &C. 
(Concluded from page 123.) 
XII. PERSPIRATION. 
299. It is not, however, exclusively by the action of light and air that 
the nature of sap is altered. Evaporation is constantly going on during 
the growth of a plant, and sometimes is so copious, that an individual will 
perspire its own weight of water in the course of 24 hours. 
300. The loss thus occasioned by the leaves is supplied by crude fluid, 
absorbed by the roots, and conveyed up the stem with great rapidity. 
301. The consequence of such copious perspiration is the separation 
and solidification of the carbonized matter that is produced for the pecu¬ 
liar secretions of a species. 
302. For the maintenance of a plant in health, it is indispensable that 
the supply of fluid by the roots should be continual and uninterrupted. 
303. It any thing causes perspiration to take place faster than it can 
be counteracted by the absorption of fluid from the earth, plants will be 
dried up and perish. 
304. Such causes are, destruction of spongioles, an isufficient quantity 
of fluid in the soil, an exposure of the spongioles to occasional dryness, 
and a dry atmosphere. 
305. The most ready means of counteracting the evil consequences of 
an imperfect action of the roots is by preventing or diminishing evapora¬ 
tion. 
306. This is to be effected by rendering the atmosphere extremely hu¬ 
mid. 
307. Thus, in curvilinear iron hot-houses, in which the atmosphere be¬ 
comes so dry in consequence of the heat, that plants perish, it is necessary 
that the air should be rendered extremely humid, by throwing water upon 
the pavement, or by introducing steam. 
308. And in transplantation in dry weather, evergreens, or plants in 
leaf, often die, because the spongioles are destroyed, or so far injured in 
the operation as to be unable to act, while the leaves never cease to per¬ 
spire. 
309. The greater certainty of transplanting plants that have been grow¬ 
ing in pots is from this latter circumstance intelligible. 
310. While the utility of putting cuttings or newly transplanted seed¬ 
lings into a shady damp atmosphere, is explained by the necessity of hin¬ 
dering evaporation. 
XIII. cuttings. 
311. When a separate portion of a plant is caused to produce new roots 
and branches, and to increase an individual, it is a cutting. 
312. Cuttings are of two sorts—cuttings properly so called, and eyes. 
(319.) 
313. A cutting consists of an internodium, or a part of one, with its no¬ 
dus and leaf-bud. 
314. When the internodium is plunged in the earth it attracts fluid from 
the soil, and nourishes the bud until it can feed itself. 
315. The bud, feeding at first upon the matter in the internodium, gra¬ 
dually elongates upwards into a branch, and sends organized matter down¬ 
wards, which becomes roots. 
316. As soon as it has established a communication with the soil, it be¬ 
comes a new individual, exactly like that from which it was taken. j 
317. As it is the action of the leaf-buds that causes growth in a cutting, I 
t follows that no cutting without a leaf-bud will grow; 
318. Unless the cutting has great vitality and power of forming adven- 
tious leaf-buds, (119.) which sometimes happens. 
319. An eye is a leaf-bud without an internodium. 
320. It only differs from a cutting in having no reservoir of food on 
which to exist, and in emitting its roots immediately from the base of the 
leaf-bud into the soil, 
321. As cuttings will very often, if not always, deveiope leaves before 
any powerful connection is formed between them and the soil, they are 
peculiarly liable to suffer from perspiration. 
322. Hence the importance of maintaining their atmosphere in an uni¬ 
form state of humidity, as is effected by putting bell or other glasses over 
them. 
323. In this case, however, it is necessary that if air-tight covers are 
employed, such as bell glasses, they should be from time to time removed 
and replaced, for the sake of getting rid of excessive humidity. 
324. Layers differ from cuttings in nothing except that they strike root 
into the soil while yet adhering to the parent plant. 
325. Whatever is true of cuttings is true of layers, except that the lat¬ 
ter are not liable to suffer by evaporation, because of their communica¬ 
tion with the parent plant. 
326. As cuttings strike roots into the earth by the action of leaves or 
leaf-buds, it might be supposed that they will strike most readily when 
the leaves or leaf-buds are in their greatest vigor. 
327. Nevertheless, this power is controlled so much by the peculiar 
| vital powers of different species, and by secondary considerations, that it 
is impossible to say that this is an absolute rule. 
328. Thus Dahlias and other herbaceous plants will strike root freely 
when cuttings are very young; and Heaths, Azaleas, and other hard 
wooded plants, only when the wood has just begun to harden. 
329. The former is, probably, owing to some specific vital excitability, 
the force of which we cannot appreciate; the latter either to a kind of 
torpor, which seems to seize such plants when their tissue is once emp¬ 
tied of fluid, or to a natural slowness to send downwards woody matter, 
whether for wood or not, which is the real cause of their wood being harder. 
j 330. If ripened cuttings are upon the whole the most fitted for multi¬ 
plication, it is because their tissue is less absorbent than when younger, 
and that they are less likely to suffer either from repletion or evaporation. 
! 331. For, to gorge tissue with food, before leaves are in action to de¬ 
compose and assimilate it, is as prejudicial as to empty tissue by the ac¬ 
tion of leaves, before spongioles are prepared to replenish it. 
332. For this reason pure silex, in which no stimulating substances are 
contained (silver sand,) is the best adapted for promoting the rooting of 
cuttings that strike with difficulty. 
I 333. And for the same reason, cuttings with what gardeners call a heel 
to them, or a piece of the older wood, strike root more readily than such 
as are not so protected. The greater age of the tissue of the heel ren¬ 
ders it less absorbent than tissue that is altogether newly formed. 
334. It is to avoid the bad effect of evaporation that leaves are usually 
I for the most part removed from a cutting, when it is first prepared. 
XIV. scions. 
335. A scion is a cutting (311.) which is caused to grow upon another 
plant, and not in earth. 
336. Scions are of two sorts, scions properly so called, and buds (354.) 
337. Whatever is true of cuttings is true also of scions, all circumstan¬ 
ces being equal. 
333. When a scion is adapted to another plant, it attracts fluid from it 
for the nourishment of its leaf-buds until they can feed themselves. 
339. Its buds thus fed gradually grow upwards into branches, and send 
woody matter downwards, which is analogous to roots. 
340. At the same time the cellular substance of the scion and its stock 
adheres (19.) so as to form a complete organic union. 
341. The wobdy matter descending from the bud passes through the 
cellular substance into the stock, wheie it occupies the same situation as 
would have been occupied by woody matter.supplied by buds belonging 
to the stock itself. 
342. Once united, the scion covers the wood of the s'ock with new 
wood, and causes the production of new roots. 
343. But the character of the woody matter sent down by the scion 
over the wood of the stock being determined by the cellular substance, 
which has exclusively a horizontal develonement, (73.) it follows that the 
wood of the stock will always remain apparently the same, although it is 
furnished by the scion 
344. Some scions will grow upon a stock without being able to trans¬ 
mit any woody matter into it; as some Cacti. 
j 345. When this happens, the adhesion of the two takes place by the 
cellular substance only, and the union is so imperfect that a slight degree 
of violence suffices to dissever them. 
j 346. And in such cases the buds are fed by their woody matter, which 
[absorbs the ascending sap from the stock at the point where the adhesion 
has occurred; and the latter, never augmenting in diameter, is finally 
overgrown by the scion. 
347. When, in such instances, the communication between the stock 
and the scion is so much interrupted that the sap can no longer ascend 
with sufficient rapidity into the branches, the latter die: as in many 
peaches. 
