IS GRAFTAGE A DEVITALIZING PROCESS? 149 



easily cast by wind and snow into streams and moist places, where they 

 sometimes take root. But mere unnaturalness of any operation has no 

 importance in discussion of phenomena attaching to cultivated plants, 

 for all cultivation is itself unnatural in this ordinary sense. 



But I further fail to see why the union of scion and stock is any more 

 mysterious or unusual than the rooting of cuttings; in fact it has always 

 seemed to me to be the simpler and more normal process of the two. A 

 wounded surface heals over as a matter of protection to the plant, and when 

 two wounded surfaces of consanguineous plants are closely applied, noth- 

 ing is more natural than that the nascent cells should interlock and unite. 

 In other words, I do not see why two cells from different allied stems should 

 refuse to unite any more than two cells from the same stem. But why bits 

 of stem should throw out roots from their lower portion and leaves from 

 their upper portion, when both ends may be to every human sense exactly 

 alike, is indeed a mystery. We regard healing as one of the necessary 

 functions of stems, but rooting can not be so regarded. 



I have said this much by way of preface in order to free your minds of 

 any feeling which you may possess that graftage is in principle and essence 

 opposed to nature, and is therefore fundamentally wrong. A large part of 

 the discussion of the philosophy of grafting appears to have been random 

 because of a conviction or assumption that it is necessarily opposed to 

 natural processes. 



It does not follow from these propositions, however, that graftage is a 

 desirable method of multiplying plants, but that the subject must be 

 approached by means of direct and positive evidence. Much has been said 

 during the last three years concerning the merits of graftage, and the 

 opponents of the system have made the most sweeping statements of its 

 perniciousness. This recent discussion started from an editorial which 

 appeared in The Field, an English journal, and which was copied in The 

 Garden of January 26. 1889, with an invitation for discussion of the sub- 

 ject. The article opens as follows: "We doubt if there is a greater nuisance 

 in the whole practice of gardening than the art of grafting. It is very clever, 

 it is very interesting, but it will be no great loss if it is abolished altogether. 

 It is for the convenience of the nurserymen that it is done in nine cases out of 

 ten, and in nearly all instances it is not only needless but harmful. ' ' " 

 If we made the nurserymen give us things on their own roots, they would 

 find some quick means of doing so." A most profuse discussion followed 

 for a period of two years, in which many excellent observers took part. 

 Some of the denunciations of graftage are as follows: "Grafting is always 

 a makeshift, and very often a fraud." "Grafting is in effect a kind of 

 adulteration. ' ' " It is an analogue of the coffee and chicory busi- 

 ness. Grafted plants of all kinds are open to all sorts of accidents and dis- 

 aster and very often the soil or the climate or the cultivator is blamed by 

 employers for evils which thus originated in the nursery. ' - If in 



certain cases grafting as a convenience has to be resorted to, then let it be 

 root-grafting, a system that eventually affords the scion a chance of root- 

 ing on its own account in a natural way." "Toy games, such as grafting 

 and budding, will have to be abandoned, and real work must be begun on 

 some sound and sensible plan." "Any fruit-bearing or ornamental tree 

 that will not succeed on its own roots had better go to the rubbish fire at 

 once. We want no coddled or grafted stuff when own-rooted things are 

 in all ways infinitely better, healthier, and longer lived." These sweep- 

 ing statements are made by F. W. Bukbidge of Dublin, a well-known 



