478 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book XVII. 



by chance, another great instructor, and one from whom, per- 

 haps, we have learnt a still greater number of lessons. _ A 

 careful husbandman, 10 being desirous, for its better protection, 

 to surround his cottage with a palisade, thrust the stakes 

 into growing ivy, in order to prevent them from rotting. 

 Seized by the tenacious grasp of the still living ivy, the stakes 

 borrowed life from the life of another wood, and it was found 

 that the stock of a tree acted in place of earth. 



For this method of grafting the surface is made level with a 

 saw, and the stock carefully smoothed with the pruning-knife. 

 This done, there are two modes of proceeding, the first of 

 which consists in grafting between the bark and the wood. 

 The ancients were fearful at first of cutting into the wood, but 

 afterwards they ventured to pierce it to the very middle, and 

 iriserted the graft in the pith, taking care to enclose but one, 

 because the pith, they thought, was unable to receive more. An 

 improved method has, however, in more recent times, allowed 

 of as many as six grafts being inserted, it being considered 

 desirable by additional numbers to make a provision for the 

 contingency of some of them not surviving. With this view, 

 an incision is carefully made in the middle of the stock, a thin, 

 wedge being inserted to prevent the sides from closing, until 

 the graft, the end of which is first cut to a point, has been let 

 into the fissure. In doing this many precautions are neces- 

 sary, and more particularly every care should be taken that 

 the stock is that of a tree suitable for the purpose, and that 

 the graft is taken from one that is proper for grafting. The 

 sap, 11 too, is variously distributed in the several trees, and does 

 not occupy the same place in all. In the vine and the fig 12 the 

 middle of the tree is the driest, and it is in the summit that 

 the generative power resides ; hence it is, that from the top 

 the grafts are selected. In the olive, again, the sap lies in the 



10 This storv is borrowed from Theoplirastus, De Cans. B. ii. c. 19. 

 Fee remarks, that it is very doubtful if an operation of so coarse a nature 

 could be productive of such results ; and he says, that, at all events, the two 

 woods must have been species of the same genus, or else individuals of the 

 same family. The mode of grafting here described is called by agricul- 

 turists in foreign countries, " Pliny's graft." 



11 These statements as to the locality of the sap are erroneous. 



12 The fig is the only fruit that is not improved by grafting ; but then 

 it is not similar to most fruit, being, as Fee says, nothing more than a 

 fleshy floral receptacle. 



