PROPAGATION. 233 



the graft slioiild be shifted in the binding but a hair's-breadth 

 away from the bark, so that the two barks do not meet, faihire 

 is certain, for it will not join to the plain wood of the stock. 

 Very small grafts may be put on to very large trunks, and do 

 well, by splitting out a knife-shaped slit just through the bark, 

 and cutting out a knife-shaped wedge in the stock ; only keep 

 in mind the touching of the barks, or you fail to a certainty. 

 It is only in grafting old trees to change the sorts that this 

 plan is necessary. By attending to the conditions before 

 given, there will be no difi&culty in succeeding with a graft, 

 and the advantage of grafting may be estimated, when it is 

 considered that a pear or an apple-tree found to be good, might 

 be grafted on a hundred crab stocks, and in one year become 

 a hundred trees, identically the same as the one the grafts 

 were taken from. But grafting is not confined to fruit-trees. 

 Every kind of shrub, stove, greenhouse, or hardy, may be 

 grafted. The newest and best rhododendrons may be grafted 

 on the common ponticum, which, if abeady established in the 

 ground, and doing well, would cause the new sort to grow 

 most vigorously. All the fancy thorns could be grafted on a 

 common hedge. The finest azaleas may be put on the oldest 

 and worst, if the proper conditions be attended to. The vines 

 in a hot-house may be changed in a season, for the entire 

 vigour of the established plant would be throTVTi into the graft, 

 by which means the Black Hamburgh gi^ape of the last season 

 may be converted into the Muscat or Frontignac of the pre- 

 sent, or the Sweetwater of the present be changed to the Black 

 Prince of the next. There have been recommended far too 

 many ways of grafting, as if the more ways there could be 

 found of doing the same thing, the better instead of the worse 

 for the learner. The most simple are the best and the most 

 certain. 



Inarching. — Grafting by approach, or, as it is also called, 

 inarching, is the art of uniting the branch of one tree to the 

 stock of another before either are separated, for the graft is 

 half supported by the parent plant while it unites, and there- 

 fore, there is no risk of losing the graft. In this operation, 

 we have simply to cut, or rather shave half way through the 

 branch intended to be grafted on the stock, and to shave the 

 stock in like manner to a flat place wide enough to receive it ; 

 the tAvo are then brought together and bound fii-mly, taking 

 especial care that the barks meet : by bending the two a little, 



