14 FRUIT BOOK. 



GRAFTING. 



The origin of grafting is lost in the obscurity of 

 antiquity. The art w as carried to a great extent in 

 Italy about the time of the Christian era. The va- 

 rieties best known, and most generally in use are, 

 whip, or tongue grafting, side, or bark grafting, cleft 

 grafting, and saddle grafting. The French have, 

 with their usual faculty of invention, enlarged this 

 number to a great extent. Professor Thoin has de- 

 scribed above forty methods of grafting. Inarching, 

 or grafting by approach, is another modification of 

 this art. In the spring of 1840 we restored a dwarf 

 pear tree, which was nearly, or quite dead from the 

 root to three inches above the ground, by planting 

 around it four or five seedling pear stocks, and in- 

 arching their tops into the living bark eight inches 

 above the surface of the ground. In the following 

 fall this tree bore nearly half a peck of the green 

 sugar pear. The cleft, or stock grafting, is the most 

 generally practised in New England, and the whip, 

 or tongue grafting, is the mode in use in the best 

 fruit-tree nurseries in England. The former me- 

 thod is performed in the following manner : The 

 head of the stock or branch being cut off, a slit is 

 made in the top deep enough to receive the scion, 

 which should be cut sloping, like a wedge, so as to 

 fit the slit made in the stock. Care must be taken 

 that the side of the wedge which is to be placed 

 outward be thicker than the other, and in placing 



