If this statement seems too sweeping, let us wait a moment until 

 some of the simpler facts can be stated. Doubtless there are persons 

 who have had the wisdom to see long ago all that is here set down ; 

 but many persons, even horticulturists of experience and ability, 

 have long overlooked the facts. 



How do stock and cion unite in the growth of a graft ? The short 

 and easy answer is that the two grow together. The common idea 

 is that the two pieces grow fast to one another, just as two pieces of 

 bone grow together when they heal after a healthy boy breaks his 

 leg. There is a notion further that both cion and stock produce 

 new tissue, and that these new tissues commingle or coalesce in some 

 way ; but this speculation is even more vague than the primary one 

 which leads to it. 



In herbacious grafting (where soft growing parts are used) the 

 union may possibly be somewhat of this sort ; but even here there is 

 usually no general commingling of the two members as has been 

 popularly imagined. The original cion and the original stock re- 

 main to the end of their existence very largely separate and dis- 

 tinct. 



In ordinary graftage, where the cion is a cutting of hard, ripe, one- 

 year-old wood and the stock is a dormant stem or root, it is, on the 

 face of the proposition, impossible that the two should unite. Dis- 

 regarding for the moment the very thin (though very important) 

 cambium zone, the stock and cion are made up wholly of dead wood 

 and bark. With perfectly negligible exceptions the cells are all 

 dead — totally and forever dead. It is absolutely impossible for them 

 to grow or to unite with anything. One might as well talk of making 

 a lead pencil unite with a pen holder or a neckyoke with a single- 

 tree. The two may be glued together, waxed together, tied to- 

 gether ; but they can never unite. 



It is said sometimes that the cambium layers of stock and cion 

 unite. This is quite a different matter, and though in the sense in 

 which it is usually presented, the statement furnishes no explanation 

 of the process, it leads us in the right direction. This thin sheet of 

 cambium, lying between the bark and the wood, is the only portion 

 of a tree stem which is really alive, the only portion which can grow, 

 nd so, necessarily, the part to which we must look for the beginning 

 of the graft union. 



