REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 105 



cultivation of fruit trees, and to the improve- 

 ment of the sorts by grafting. " To obtain extra- 

 ordinary good, large, and beautiful apple fruit," 

 he advises " by all means to graft good grafts 

 upon such apple stocks as are produced from 

 the seed, and have been deprived of their heart 

 root which shoots downwards" * 



To the invaluable and long continued inves- 

 tigations and experiments of Mr. Andrew 

 Knight, however, and to his acute reasoning on 

 the subject, the present highly improved know- 

 ledge/of the best method of grafting trees, and 

 of the general nature of the subject, is mainly 

 owing. In a paper published in the Phil. Trans, 

 for 1795, Mr. Knight gives a very interesting 

 account of the experiments which convinced 

 him of the fact, so important in its practical re- 

 sults, that " every cutting taken from the apple, 

 and probably every other tree, will be affected 

 by the state of the parent stock. If that be too 

 young to produce fruit, it will grow with vigour 

 but will not blossom ; and if it be too old, it 

 will immediately produce fruit, but will never 

 make a healthy tree, and consequently never 



* Phil. Trans, abridged, vol. xix. p. 192-3, " Account 

 of some new books." 



