I with many other amateurs have felt the need greatly of a rapid means of propagating what plants we wish to increase; and the need has become more urgent since we have established a bureau of exchange. We by this means add so easily to a small collection that, now we once know and appreciate it, will not be easily induced to give it up. I have a large cold pit to winter over my plants in, with never the hope of having flowers during the winter, as I have no means of heating it, and (often as this, for instance, which has been unprecedentedly cold with us) congratulate myself on saving them alive to bloom during the summer season. I am contemplating a change though in said pit - to heat - and I am consulting with a noted florist to see if my plan is feasible. But in the meantime our season for propagating many plants is almost upon us, and I have, I believe, hit upon an idea that if it will work and become known, I will be considered a public benefactor by my amateur sisterhood. I give you my idea, and ask in all simplicity, do you think it will work ? I have an ordinary kerosene stove with attachments thereto usual to them - a baker for one - which I propose being one of my accessories to my propagating apparatus. 1st, I intend to fill an iron baking pan, 3 inches deep 14x18 inches, with clean white sand, and in this place closely my slips or cuttings. 2d, light the fire, place my baker in its usual place, and within that as deep a boiler as it will accommodate, filled with water, closing the door of the baker upon it; then on top of this baker I propose setting this pan of cuttings, and I think the boiling water, generating steam, on escaping around and under the pan will give me just any temperature I may desire, by regulating it with the little rachet wheels to turn up flame or lower it, by putting in a thermometer in the sand and keeping sand sopping wet.

Why have I not a means of rapidly increasing all my plants - those that require great heat and those that like little ? I would feel exceedingly obliged if you would give me your opinion of my plan. I have not one practical scientific idea, but I believe this will work. Spartanburg, S. C.

[This is a very good suggestion, and the apparatus will no doubt work very well.

There is, however, one thing which may be said about this propagating subject, that the more experience one gets the simpler the art of propagation is found to be, till in time we find that we need scarcely any apparatus at all. Two or three generations ago propagation was thought to be a great mystery; only a few had the hidden secrets revealed to them. In some of the famous nurseries of the Old World the propagating department was surrounded by a high wall like a prison, and only the propagator and his assistants ever allowed to enter. These assistants had to pay a round sum for initiation into the mysteries of this sacred place, and of course it was not necessary under these circumstances for the chief propagator to put his finger on his lip, or to wink his eye. They were interested in keeping the secrets that flourished only within the walls. With the era of magazine literature, however, the wonderful processes leaked out, and bell glasses, hand glasses, various colored glasses, silver sand and other wonderfully colored sands, hot-water pipes, hot-water tanks, hot chambers, and no end of contrivances, were illustrated and described; and we often look back to even so recent a time as the early volumes of our own magazine in amazement at the many wonderful contrivances for successful propagation.

In these days nurserymen employ even the most thick-headed boys in grafting, budding and cutting making. A backwoodsman with a hatchet can graft a tree as well as an old professional with a five-dollar grafting outfit. Boxes of sandy mush set in the full sun, root soft wooded cuttings as well as any old-time forcing pit; and when we look at our boxes of rooted heath cuttings stuck in by a boy who hardly knows how to read, and remember the time we had with them when we hardly dared to speak of them except as Ericas, we really think the world moves.

As a practical hint in propagating, we may make room for one leading principle here: Full light is opposed to the rooting impulse of a plant. Roots are formed under ground, in the darkness. Wood formed in partial light will root easier than wood formed in full light. For this reason those who propose to strike cuttings grow their plants first in partial light. A rose grown under glass will give cuttings that strike easily; cuttings from out-door roses root with difficulty. We learn from all this the kind of wood to be used for cuttings is of much more importance than any method of heating or of treating them. - Ed. G. M].