CHAPTER IV. 



PROPAGATION BY BUDDING AND GRAFTING BY LAYERS AND 

 BY CUTTINGS. 



WHEN trees are raised from seeds, as before stated, there 

 is no certainty that the same identical variety will be re- 

 produced. In many cases, the shade of variation will be 

 scarcely perceptible ; in others it will be wide and distinct. 

 It hence becomes desirable in preventing a return towards 

 the original wild state, or, in other words, to perpetuate the 

 identical individual thus highly improved, to adopt some 

 other mode of propagation, for the purpose of multiplying trees 

 of such varieties as possess a high excellence, instead of con- 

 stantly creating new ones, with the hazard of most of them 

 proving worthless. 



It will be distinctly remembered, that new varieties must 

 always spring from seeds ; but the same individual variety 

 can be multiplied only by separating the buds, or shoots bear- 

 ing the buds, of such individual plant. As an example, the 

 Fall Pippin, when first produced from seed, was a single 

 tree of a new variety. The myriads of trees now existing of 

 this variety, are only multiplications of the branches of the 

 original. This multiplication or propagation of varieties, is 

 effected in several ways : 1, Cuttings ; 2, Layers ; 3, Graft- 

 ing ; 4, Budding. Without these means of propagation, 

 such delicious sorts as the Green Gage plum, the Elton cher- 

 ry, and ihe Seckel pear, could never have been tasted ex- 

 cept as picked from the single parent tree. 



In the multitude of different modes of grafting and bud- 

 ding, success must depend on the observance of certain fun- 

 damental principles ; a brief glance, therefore, at these 

 principles, may serve to render the explanation of all the va- 

 riations simple and intelligible. 



During the growing season of a fruit tree, the sap enters at 



