454 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



but just what no one knows, beyond of course, the knowledge that there 

 must be some conformity in habit between stock and scion; that the 

 two must start in growth at approximately the same time; and that the 

 tissues must be sufficiently alike that there be proper contact in the 

 union. Yet these facts do not sufficiently explain the affinities and 

 antipathies which plants show. Thus, the propagator has little to 

 guide him in selecting stocks and can choose only after making repeated 

 trials, near relationship being the only guide, even though often an 

 untrustworthy one. 



Nor is the tale of tribulation yet told for we shall find that not only 

 are all grafted plants affected by the kind of stock used but also by 

 the manner of propagation whether from seed or from cuttings. There 

 is no question, for example, that stocks propagated by cuttings do not 

 produce the deep tap and prong roots that seedlings do and seedlings 

 lifted and root-pruned the season before they are budded or grafted 

 have a thicker and bushier root system than if they are not so trans- 

 planted. And so at the risk of stirring up more hares than we can 

 possibly run down in this matter of stocks, it seems necessary to say 

 that we can not neglect for the best interests of fruit growing the way 

 in which stocks are growTi. Undoubtedly for some conditions we shall 

 find stocks from cuttings preferable ; under others, and generally, how- 

 ever, we shall find seedlings the better when, of course, we have a choice. 

 So, too, usually, when nursery practice permits, a stock is better for 

 having been transplanted before budding or grafting. 



In passing it may be said that a retrospective glance in horticulture 

 shows that the use of stocks for fruits and ornamentals is no new thing. 

 The Latin poets, Cato, Columella, Virgil and Plinj^ could wield the 

 grafting knife as well as the pen as every school boy knows from his 

 Latin. It could be wished, however, that the statements of these old 

 Romans were as accurate as the meter in their verse for their inac- 

 curacies prepared the ground for a crop of misunderstandings which 

 even yet we are not rid of. It is probable that the Romans, and pos- 

 sibly the Greeks, propagated some fruits — the Romans certainly did 

 roses — by grafting on stocks much as do our nurserymen today. The 

 Paradise and Doucin stocks for dwarfing apples, dwarf pears on quince, 

 the Mahaleb to dwarf cherries, all have been in common use in the Old 

 World for several centuries as we learn from the old herbals. Shake- 

 speare 's familiar quotation : 



"You see, sweet maid, we marry 

 A gentle scion to the wildest stock ; 

 And make conceive a bark of baser kind, 

 By bud of nobler race ; this is an art. 

 Which does mend nature; change it rather; but 

 The art itself is nature." 



So much to show that we have the practice and experience of centuries 

 to guide us in the matter of stocks though the accumulated wisdom 

 seems to be of little present use. 



The selection of stocks leads straight to the center of another problem. 

 We are hearing much about the individuality of orchard trees and the 

 necessity of propagating from individuals having the best characters. 

 The speaker does not believe in the inheritance of acquired characters, 

 finding but little in either theory or fact to substantiate it. Present 

 knowledge makes more forceful every day the old aphorism, "Like 



