MANAGEMENT OV WALL TREES. 129 



gardeners, Thomas Andrew Knight. In that text book for all 

 horticulturists, practical, theoretical, or purely scientific, the 

 ' Physiological Papers ' of the above named author, occurs the 

 following passage, which, as eminently illustrative of what I have 

 to adduce, I shall transcribe at length : — 



" Many gardeners entertain an opinion that the stock com- 

 municates a portion of its power to bear cold, witliout injury, to 

 the species or variety of fruit which is grafted upon it ; but I 

 have ample reason to believe that this opinion is wholly errone- 

 ous ; and this kind of hardiness in the root alone can never be 

 a quality of any value in a stock, for the branches of every 

 species of tree are much more easily destroyed by frost than its 

 roots. Many also believe that a peach tree, when grafted upon 

 its native stock, very soon perishes ; but my experience does not 

 further support this conclusion than that it proves seedling peach 

 trees, when growing in a very rich soil, to be greatly injured by 

 the excessive use of the pruning-knife upon their branches, 

 when these are confined to too narrow limits. The stock in this 

 instance can, I conceive, only act injviriously by supplying more 

 nutriment than can be expended ; for the root which nature gives 

 to each seedling plant must be well, if not best, calculated to 

 support it ; and the chief general conclusions which my ex- 

 pei'ience has enabled me safely to draw, are, that a stock of a 

 species or genus different from that of the fruit to be grafted 

 upon it can rarely be used with advantage, unless where the object 

 of the planter is to restrain and to debilitate ; and that wliere 

 stocks of the same species with the bud or graft are used, it will 

 generally be found advantageous to select such as approximate 

 in their habits and state of change, or improvement from cultiva- 

 tion, those of the variety of fruit which the}^ are intended to 

 support." * 



Now the very circumstances here pointed out as conducive to 

 debility and shortness of life, are exactly such as the peach and 

 analogous fruits receive at the hands of cultivators generally, 

 beginning in the nursery. To render the argument clearly I 

 shall briefly trace the routine of treatment which the kinds of 

 trees under notice are subjected to, and then offer some sugges- 

 tions for a reformed mode of procedure, and one, it is hoped, more 

 consonant with the nature of vegetable life and the results 

 sought to be obtained by the cultivator. 



The peach bud is inserted on a plum stock, and we will pre- 

 sume it to have taken kindly to its foster parent. The next 

 step is to " head back" the stock, tliat when the peach bud 

 starts into vigour the wound may be healed over, and an ap- 

 parent natural union take place between head and stock. If the 



* Physiological Papers, p. 223. 



