272 EFFECT OF GKAFT1XG ON FRUITS. 



569. Crafting. A very important benefit is produced, both as re- 

 gards the period of fruiting and the quality of the fruit, by the process 

 of grafting. This is accomplished by taking a young twig or scion, 

 called a graft, and causing it to unite to a vigorous stem or stock, thus 

 enabling it to derive a larger supply of nutritive matter than it could 

 otherwise obtain, and checking its vegetative powers. In place of a 

 slip or cutting, a bud is sometimes taken. In order that grafting 

 may be successfully performed, there must be an affinity between the 

 graft and the stock as regards their sap, &c. It has often been sup- 

 posed that any kinds of plants may be grafted together, and instances are 

 mentioned by Virgil and Pliny, where different fruits are said to have 

 been borne on the same stock. This was probably produced by what 

 the French call Greffe des charlatans, cutting down a tree within a 

 short distance of the ground, and then hollowing out the stump, and 

 planting within it several young trees of different species ; in a few 

 years they grow up together so as to fill up the cavity and appear to 

 be one. The deception is kept up better, if some buds of the parent 

 stock have been kept alive. 



570. The object which gardeners wish to secure by grafting, is the 

 improvement of the kinds of fruit, the perpetuation of good varieties, 

 which could not be procured from seed, and the hastening of the period 

 of the fruit-bearing. Grafting a young twig on an older stock, has the 

 effect of making it flower earlier than it would otherwise do. The 

 accumulation of sap in the old stock is made beneficial to the twig, and 

 a check is given at the same tune to its tendency to produce leaves. 



571. Mr. Knight did much to improve fruits by grafting. He 

 believed, however, that a graft would not live longer than the natural 

 limit of life allowed to the tree from which it has been taken. In this 

 way he endeavoured to account for the supposed extinction of some 

 valuable varieties of fruits, such as the Golden pippin, and many cider 

 apples of the seventeenth century.* He conceived that the only natural 

 method of propagating plants was by seed. His views have not been 

 confirmed by physiologists. Many plants are undoubtedly propagated 

 naturally by shoots, buds, tubers, &c., as well as by seed ; and it is 

 certain that the life of slips may be prolonged by various means, much 

 beyond the usual limit of the life of the parent stock. The Sugar-cane 

 is propagated naturally by the stem, the Strawberry by runners, the 

 Couch-grass by creeping stems, Potatoes and Jerusalem Artichokes by 

 tubers, the Tiger-lily by bulblets, and Ap.himp.nes by scaly bodies, like 

 tubers. The fruits, moreover, which Mr. Knight thought had disap- 

 peared, such as Red streak, Golden pippin, and Golden Harvey, still 

 exist, and any feebleness that they exhibit does not appear to proceed 

 from old age, but seems to be owing to other causes, such as the nature 

 of the soil, cold, violence, and mutilation. Vines have been transmitted 



* See Knight's Horticultural Papers, 8vo, London, 1841, p. 8L 



