]04 REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 



generally, as is universally known, is to improve 

 the beauty and value of the vegetable produc- 

 tions by which we are so bountifully surrounded. 

 This subject, interesting as it is, can here be 

 only recommended to notice, without further 

 entering on it. Its details may afford to those 

 whose local situation enables them practically to 

 pursue them, an occupation at once healthy to 

 both body and mind, and so connected with che- 

 mistry and mineralogy, as to lead on from the 

 simple nurture of a pretty or useful plant, to the 

 study of some of the most important of the 

 sciences. 



77. What great antiquity the method of 

 grafting may claim, we may gather from St. 

 Paul's exhortation to the Gentiles in the llth 

 chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, in which 

 the metaphor is used throughout with an evident 

 knowledge of the subject. Indeed the custom 

 appears to have been one with which practical 

 gardeners have been familiar for ages, and to 

 which attention has been at times particularly 

 turned. 



In the Philosophical Transactions for 1675, 

 mention is made of a work by Abraham Hunt- 

 ing, printed three years before, which shows 

 that his attention was practically given to the 



