373 
They resembled more, plants raised from seed than those raised from 
cuttings, as usually practised; and they were so perfect, yet so small, 
that Mr. Knight, in a letter I received from him within a month of his 
lamented death, expressed a hope that by his newly discovered mode of 
propagation he would be able to send me many fruit and forest trees at 
once in an envelope. The success of these cuttings is owing chiefly to 
the action of their mature leaves. Mr. Knight considered that no cutting 
ever possesses the power of adding to itself vitally a single particle of 
matter till it has acquired mature and efficient foliage. Gardeners for¬ 
merly used cuttings having some mature and efficient foliage, and other 
foliage which was young and growing; consequently “two distinct 
processes were going on at the same time within them, which operate in 
opposition to each other. The young and immature leaves expend, in 
adding to their own bulk, that which ought to be expended in the crea¬ 
tion of shoots.” 
The peach-tree, in this latitude, seldom matures all its young wood ; 
by pinching off the ends of the shoots early in the fall, the sap, which 
would otherwise have been expended in perfecting and adding to the 
number of immature leaves, is stored up in the tissue of the wood that 
remains, which becomes harder or riper in consequence of these secre¬ 
tions. So pinching the weak lateral shoots of the apple and pear, back 
to two or three mature leaves, favors the development of blossom-buds 
and fruit-bearing spurs. “When the branches of the vine,” Lindley 
remarks, “are, in the autumn, beginning to slacken in their power of 
lengthening, theory says it is then right to stop the shoots by pinching 
off their ends ; because after that season newly-formed leaves have little 
time to do more than organize themselves, which must take place at the 
expense of matter forming in other leaves. Autumn-stopping of the 
vine shoots should, therefore, be not only unobjectionable but advanta¬ 
geous, for the leaves which remain, after that operation, will then direct 
all their energies to the perfection of the grapes.” 
Every plant contains within itself, during winter, or its season of rest, 
a fund of elaborated sap, by which its first emitted leaves and roots are 
supported. The production of blossoms and fruit depends upon the 
quantity of disposable organizable matter previously prepared by mature 
leaves. And the quantity of organizable matter which a given plant 
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