IS GRAFTAGE DEVITALIZING? 157 



grafting between consanguineous plants is better than propagating 

 by cuttings or layers. In other words, graftage is really sexual 

 multiplication; so if seeds have an advantage over buds in forming 

 the plant foundation, graftage is a more perfect method than any 

 other artificial practice in fact the nearest approach to direct sex- 

 ual reproduction. So when seeds cannot be relied upon wholly, 

 as they cannot, for the reproduction of many garden varieties, 

 graftage is the ideal practice; always provided, of course, that it 

 is properly done between congenial subjects. It is not to be ex- 

 pected that the practice is adapted to all plants, any more than is 

 the making of cuttings of leaves or of stems, but this fact cannot 

 be held to invalidate the system. 



Is there direct evidence to show that "grafting is always a make- 

 shift," a "toy game," that "grafted plants are open to all sorts of 

 accidents and disaster," that "own-rooted things are better, healthier, 

 and longer lived"? These statements allow of no exception; they 

 are universal and iron-bound. If the questions were to be fully 

 met, we should need to discuss the whole art of graftage in all its 

 detail, but if there is one well-authenticated case in which a grafted 

 plant is as strong, as hardy, as vigorous, as productive and as long 

 lived as seedlings or as cutting plants, we shall have established the 

 fact that the operation is not necessarily bad, and have created the 

 presumption that other cases exist. An instance will serve. 



In the forties about 100 apple trees were grown from seeds on a 

 Michigan farm, but as most of the fruit was poor or indifferent the 

 trees were top-grafted in the most desultory manner, some being 

 grafted piecemeal with some of the original branches allowed to 

 remain permanently, while others were entirely changed over at 

 once; a few of them grafted on the trunk when as large as 

 broomsticks, the whole top having been cut off when the oper- 

 ation was performed. A few trees which chanced to bear toler- 

 able fruit were not grafted. 



Many of the trees died from indeterminable causes; fully half of 

 the deaths have been seedling trees for many years as vigorous 

 as the grafted ones. Of the trees that remain the grafted specimens 

 are in every way as vigorous, hardy and productive as the others. 

 Some of these trees have two tops, one grafted shoulder high in 

 the early days, the other in the resulting top many years later. 

 Those trees which contain both original branches and grafted ones 

 in the same top show similar results the foreign branches are in 

 every way as vigorous, virile and productive as the others, and are 

 proving to be as long-lived. 



This positive experiment compassed by the lifetime of one man 

 shows that own-rooted trees are not always "infinitely better, 

 healthier, and longer-lived" than grafted plants. The illustration 

 may be considered typical of thousands of orchards, containing 

 various fruits in all parts of the country. 



The fact may be cited that the old seedling orchards about the 

 country are much more uneven and contain more dead trees or 

 vacant places than commercial grafted orchards of even the same 



