418 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
March 2 . 
will cause fibres to protrude. About the propriety of 
this, under the circumstances Mr. Saunders quotes, I 
have not the slightest doubt; but is not this almost 
tantamount to expressing a doubt about the powers of 
the Quince stock? I now fear that I have an unplea¬ 
sant duty to perform, and that is to say, that I must 
disagree with Mr. Saunders, when he says, p. 285, “ All 
the varieties do not do equally well on Quince bottoms, 
but the exceptions are very few.” 
This affirmation, I have little doubt, will be found 
correct as to Jersey, Guernsey, and the southern coun¬ 
ties of England, but surely this is taking too narrow 
ground for the whole question. 
Mr. Saunders fully recognises, in the case of the 
Quince stock, the immense utility of top-dressings, or, in 
other words, the encouragement of surface-roots. Our 
readers, who have been acquainted with The Cottage 
Gardener from its earlier period, will, doubtless, re¬ 
member, that in all the advice I have been called upon 
to offer, as to hardy fruit culture, I have ever persisted 
in the propriety of encouraging surface-roots by a sys¬ 
tematic and periodical procedure; and I have had my 
vanity (I may call it) gratified, by observing the idea 
echoed by most of our Calendar men, and by writers of 
what are commonly termed “ original articles.” The 
remainder of Mr. Saunders’ excellent paper is of so 
suggestive a character, that some long evening I must 
beg to have another sitting with it; indeed, we are but 
on the threshold of this interesting question. 
R. Errington. 
SPRING PROPAGATION. 
I enter on these—the first lessons in gardening— 
with all the enthusiasm of a young volunteer, although 
I have been pressed into the service, and, like all other 
enthusiasts, I shall be liable to overshoot the mark, or 
hit so low down that I shall miss my aim both ways in 
my hurry. It is not learning, or knowledge, or philo¬ 
sophy, and all that, which is so much needed, when 
you want to teach plain, common things, as the knack 
of doing it so as to be easily understood by those who 
have only plain, common sense, in the absence of all 
practice, to help them to learn from what you say or 
write. They send wise men to parliament, and yet 
members are constantly asking questions as to how 
things are to be done, or to be brought forward, that 
they may steer their course accordingly. Here it is 
exactly the same; we want questions to be put to us 
about every thing we write which is not clearly under¬ 
stood; we, also, want questions about things which we 
pass over; and we want questions relating to things 
which we forget to write about altogether, or but very 
seldom. Now, we do receive such questions, in great 
numbers, every week—that branch is very expensive on 
account of them, and one would suppose there could 
not be a more easy way of learning and teaching; yet 
it is far from it; there is not one in ten who can ask a 
legal question, or a question on any branch of business, 
with which he is totally unacquainted, that can be 
understood by a lawyer, or any other man of business, 
so as to be able to give a professional answer to it; and 
our branch seems to be more difficult still, for we 
hardly find one in twenty of our correspondents whose 
questions we can make anything of except by mere 
guessing. For all that, I wish to be reminded of every 
letter of the alphabet of gardening which I may pass 
over, or mumble about so as not to be clearly under¬ 
stood by all my readers. 
Making Cuttings is one of the easiest things in gar¬ 
dening. Anybody can make cuttings after one or two 
lessons. In the first lesson, at page 877, we see that 
the young growth of the tops of side-shoots are the best 
for cuttings of all soft-wooded plants, and that all tops 
are equally good, if they are not very strong and suc¬ 
culent ; that two inches is the very longest that these 
cuttings should be, except Geraniums, and that halt-an- 
inch is long enough for many of them, as dwarf 
Lobelias, for instance, if one can handle them ; that all 
cuttings of this class are best made by a clean cut 
across under a joint made on the nail of the left thumb, 
as we used to cut the nib of a quill-pen ; that the pots 
called “ large No. 60,” which are rather more than 
three inches across at the top, are the best size, but 
that a cutting-pot can never be too small; that the 
smallest pot is large enough for ten or a dozen of 
cuttings of Lobelia compacta; that such very small 
cutting-pots, and all cutting-pots, are best inside another 
pot one size larger, whether they are for bell glasses or 
not; that all cuttings are best to be quite close to the 
sides of the pot all round, and no more, but that a 
clever man, and a more clever woman, would strike 
every one of them, though the pot was as full of them 
as they could stick together; that half sand and half 
peat, or two parts of sand, and one part of leaf-mould, 
rubbed well together, make one of the best composts 
for all soft-wooded cuttings, without exception, including 
bedding Geraniums and Fuchsias; that this compost 
should not be pressed, for such cuttings, harder than 
the mould in potting a Geranium; and that a thin 
layer of white sand makes a cutting-pot look tidy, 
besides being of great use in taking the water better 
than peat and sand, and also keeping off mouldiness; 
that the pot should be nearly full, and if that was too 
troublesome to water, that the centre of the pot, or 
rather the sand in the centre, might be made into a 
hollow on purpose to take the water. I believe these to 
be the bare bones of that article; and the reasons for 
the different ways make up the whole animal where it 
stands. Animals and cuttings want water, and the pots 
must have a little water before the cuttings are planted; 
at least, it is safe to do so, but propagators seldom do 
it if they can help it; they contrive so that the sand 
and peat, or leaf-mould, or whatever they mix for the 
cuttings, is just damp enough to hold together while 
they “ put in the cuttings.” Planting cuttings is an 
outlandish way of talking; they are always put in, no 
matter where; then, after they are put in, they are well 
watered with a fine rose-pot; with a good, free drainage, 
and this sandy compost, in such small pots, it is hardly 
possible to hurt cuttings with too much water ; bottom- 
heat that would roast a Cucumber will not hurt them if 
they are double-potted, and if they stand on the surface 
of the bed, the outer pot keeps the other from drying, so 
that the sides of the cutting-pot are always moistisli, 
and that is just what makes the roots come so soon, and 
creep down the sides with such evident relish. 
So you see, that if the operation is done in this simple 
way, and the pots and cuttings are kept tidy afterwards, 
there is really no such danger about a hotbed as one 
might think; the greatest fear is about the smell of it, 
as that from hot dung, or a mixture of dung and leaves, 
or from the linings outside, is a most deadly poison to 
cuttings and to most plants. I only know the Pine¬ 
apple plant as an exception, and that would live and 
thrive in a steam from hot dung that would kill a house 
spider, or any of the insect tribe: a fact which gardeners 
take advantage of to kill the different scaly insects 
which infest this plant from the cradle in a wild state. 
There ought to be a small thermometer iu every cutting- 
bed to tell the heat morning and evening; and if there 
is nothing but cuttings in the bed, the thermometer 
should never fall, day or night, below 75°, and to be 
between that and 90° or 95° in the middle of a hot day. 
When the plants are rooted, potted off, and come to 
their senses, as it were, wo keep them much cooler at 
night, as they would be in a wild state; but for cuttings, 
