148 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



especially noticed in the case of sour apples grafted upon sweet varieties. 

 Other modification in the flavor and texture of the fruit have been noticed, 

 which do not cause them to resemble the fruits of the stock. The opera- 

 tion of grafting itself often causes the fruit to be larger and more succu- 

 lent, and to ripen earlier; this latter change, when it causes more perfect 

 ripening, improves the flavor. We can say that certain stocks improve the 

 flavor of fruit borne by the graft, while others deteriorate it, and that it 

 is probable that stocks bearing highly flavored fruits intensify the flavor 

 of the fruit borne by the graft, while stocks bearing fruits which are 

 sweet or mild in quality diminish it; but notwithstanding the abundant 

 testimony to this end, direct and careful experiments are needed. 



10. Disease. — The evidence is conclusive that certain diseases may be 

 conveyed from stock to graft, and vice versa. This applies not only to 

 diseases caused by parasitic fungi, but also to the peculiar form of mal- 

 nutrition known as variegation. It will be observed that nearly all the 

 best established changes which are noted are due to altered nutrition, and 

 though they sometimes cause the stock and graft each to acquire some of 

 the features of the other, these alterations extend mainly to such points as 

 vigor, color, and period of vegetation, and in no case can they be consid- 

 ered to be of the nature of hybridism. 



IS GRAFTAGE A DEVITALIZING PROCESS? 



BY DR. L. H. BAILEY. 



Mr. Crozier's monograph was just in type when there appeared, in 



Farm and Home of Wilmington, Delaware, a paper by Prof. L. H. Bailey 



of Cornell university, under the above title, read before a recent meeting 



of the Peninsula Horticultural society of Dover. It is regarded as an 



answer to Mr. Burbidge, who holds that graftage is necessarily injurious 



and is here given as germane to Mr. Crozier's paper as well as being of 



interest and practical value. — Secretary. 



To the popular mind there seems to be something mysterious in the 

 process of graftage. People look upon it as something akin to magic and 

 entirely opposed to the laws of nature. It is popularly thought to repre- 

 sent the extreme power which man exercises over natural forces. It is 

 strange that this opinion should prevail in these times, for the operation 

 itself is very simple and the process of union is nothing more than the 

 healing of a wound. It is in no way more mysterious than the rooting of 

 cuttings, and it is not so unnatural, if by this expression we refer to the 

 relative frequency of the occurrence of the phenomena in nature. Natural 

 grafts are by no means rare among forest trees, and occasionally the union 

 is so complete that the foster stock entirely supports and nourishes the 

 other. Cuttings, however, are very rare among wild plants; in fact I know 

 of but one instance in which cuttings are made entirely without the aid 

 of man, and that is the case of certain brittle willows whose branchlets are 



