“Let us now watch the behavior of the partly buried vine-shoot. If it had remained all in the open air, it would have borne fruit; it would have had its three or four bunches of grapes. Why should it not do so under the conditions imposed by the vine-dresser, conditions that have altered nothing in its relations to the mother stem? It still remains in uninterrupted communication with the vine that sustains it; it receives its share of ascending sap drawn from the soil by the roots of this vine; the buds remaining to it will develop leaves which, with the help of sunlight, will convert this crude sap into elaborated sap; in short, it lacks nothing to enable it to function almost as it would have done had it not been partly buried. And in fact the vine-layer does bear that same year; if well cared for, it bears several bunches of grapes. So the proverb says: The vine-layer pays its owner from the very first year. Meanwhile, acted on by the coolness and moisture of the soil and the stimulus of fertilization, it puts forth adventitious roots where it has been placed underground, and these roots grow in number and vigor until the time comes when they suffice to nourish the young vine without the help of the mother stem. It is in the third year that the rooting is far enough advanced for the young offshoot’s independent existence. Weaning is then undertaken, and the nursling is deprived of its nurse; that is to say, a stroke of the pruning-knife close to the ground and on the side toward the parent stock separates the latter from the vine-layer, which becomes henceforth self-supporting. “With its long shoots so near the ground the vine offers every convenience for carrying out the operation just described; but as a general rule shrubs and trees are far less favorably situated: their branches are not long enough or flexible enough or (a prime essential) near enough to the ground to be bent down and laid in the trench dug for receiving the layer. How is this difficulty to be overcome? The way is very simple. We have already observed the effect of cutting back; we know that a stem cut back, that is to say cut off close to the ground, develops around the border of its wound numerous adventitious buds which grow into so many shoots. They are precisely the sort of shoots we need, long, flexible, and starting from the level of the ground. Each of them, if treated as a layer, partly buried in a trench where it is fixed with a crotch, and held, above ground, in a vertical position by means of a prop, takes root sooner or later according to its species, and can then be transferred as an independent plant to any desired spot. Such is the simple method known both as layering and as arching, because it is essentially the same as ordinary layering and at the same time necessitates the bending of the young shoot so as to describe an arch.