THE PARLOR GARDENER. 77 



say, when they belong to species or varieties very 

 proximate to each other. In the portable green- 

 house, both cold and warm, we have just been 

 practising, with complete success, the operation 

 called slipping, in a variety of ways. Well, then, 

 grafting is still another kind of slipping. Instead 

 of putting the slip in the earth, that it may there 

 live by its own roots, we join it on to another 

 plant, where a piece has been cut away to make 

 room for it. Then, instead of putting out roots 

 of its own,- that it may draw from the earth the 

 sustenance which it requires, the graft incor- 

 porates itself with the plant to which it has been 

 attached, and feeds upon the stores provided by 

 the latter for its own support. This it does 

 without changing its own nature, or modifying in 

 any way that of the other. You may have re- 

 marked this in gardens. If a plum stock, upon 

 which an apricot has been grafted, puts out young 

 shoots below the graft, these are plum shoots. 

 In like manner, a sweetbrier stock with a rose 

 grafted on it, produces only branches of sweet- 

 brier, exactly such as they would have been had 

 the plant never been grafted upon. On the other 



