238 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



knife is inevitable, so soft and spongy is the wood of the 

 grafts, and so difficult is it to make a clean incision in the 

 brier. 



Stocks. — ^The stocks for grafting may be always raised from 

 the seed of the wildest and most vigorous kinds of the plant 

 that is improved. Apple-pips will produce apple-stocks ; 

 pear-pips will produce pear-stocks ; and although the finest 

 varieties of our fruits of all kinds have been procured from 

 the same means, we may always see, among a quantity of 

 seedlings, which are the wild and which are deviations that 

 afford a chance of a new and good variety. But, strange as it 

 may appear, nature will assert her right, and the tendency of 

 seedlings to go back to the wild sorts is almost universal. 

 Hence, thousands of subjects may be raised from seed, and 

 scarcely any one be an improvement ; wliile the great majo- 

 rity, perhaps nine out of ten, go back to the original, or there- 

 about. Sow seeds from the Eibstone pippin, and you have 

 crabs ; sow pips of the Gansel's Bergamot, and you have a 

 wild and scarcely eatable pear. Peach, nectarine, and plum- 

 stones will make the best stocks for their several purposes. 

 Cherry-stones will give us plenty of wild cherries : any im- 

 provement, any deviation, is the exception, not the rule. But 

 frord the seed-bed we may fairly watch the growth ; and if 

 there be anything in the habit or foliage of particular plants 

 to justify the expectation of better things, you need not use 

 them for stocks, but let them grow till they speak for them- 

 selves. If, indeed, there be anything very remarkable, it may 

 be worth grafting a piece on a strong stock, to hasten the 

 result. All the variegated holly-berries go back, or rather 

 produce the common green one. Even the yellow berries of 

 that favourite variety produce nothing but the common red- 

 berried one that we may see in the woods. And it is upon 

 these wild stocks that the choice varieties are worked ; and 

 perhaps it is a right conclusion of some authors, that most of 

 the variegations in the holly are the result of sporting 

 branches, which have been perpetuated by cuttings, grafts, 

 or by budding, which is the subject of our next observations, 

 because nearly allied to that of grafting, having the same 

 object, and answering the same purpose, of propagation. 



Budding. — As grafting is the transfer of a branch from one 

 tree, shrub, or plant to another, so this operation is the trans- 

 ferring of a single bud from one to another. By this operation 



