PROPAGATION BY GRAFTING AND BUDDING. 6 1 



the stock was brought before the Floral Committee of the 

 Royal Horticultural Society, August 4, 1875. Mr Smith 

 of Worcester obtained scions of a golden-leaved Laburnum ; 

 and wishing to propagate it as a desirable ornamental plant, he 

 increased it by budding the golden variety on the common 

 green-leaved English Laburnum as a stock. The buds took 

 kindly to the stock, and developed themselves even more 

 luxuriantly than had been expected. The buds were inserted 

 at two or three feet from the ground; and in the course of a 

 few months, not only did some of the green-leaved stocks pro- 

 duce golden-variegated branches below the point of union, but 

 pure golden stolons or " suckers " were thrown up from the 

 roots. The Rev. M. J. Berkeley, in referring to this curious case 

 at the meeting of the above date, stated that he had long held 

 the idea that variegation was a disease, and he considered this 

 instance as a proof that the disease which produces or is the 

 cause of variegation is contagious, and in the case referred to 

 he believed it was transmitted to the healthy stock by the 

 diseased scion. At the same meeting, and apropos of varie- 

 gation being transmitted to the stock by the scion, Mr David 

 Wooster remarked, that on the late Mr J. C. London's house 

 at Bayswater was trained a plant of Jasminium officinak 

 the ordinary green-leaved type which had been changed in 

 a similar manner by the insertion of buds of a golden-variegated 

 form. The buds inserted in this case did not grow that is, 

 did not throw out branches but appeared to go blind, while 

 the bark of the stock closed up around them and healed over. 

 The following year, however, golden-variegated branches similar 

 to those from which the buds had been taken made their ap- 

 pearance, and greatly added to the ornamental character of the 

 plant. Facts like these go a long way towards proving that 

 Potatoes might possibly have been changed by grafting the 

 tubers, as was asserted by Mr Fenn and others a year or two 

 ago. We learn from the ' Florist ' that an instance of variega- 

 tion induced by grafting has been observed in the nursery of 

 Mr W. Paul at Waltham Cross. The variegated variety of the 

 Castanea vesca had been grafted, standard high, on an ordinary 

 green-leaved Sweet-Chestnut stock : the graft took, but from some 

 cause or other afterwards died off ; and subsequently a young 

 shoot, with well-marked variegation on its leaves, broke out from 

 near the base of the stem. The variegation is of a creamy- 

 white colour, and marginal. Another well-marked illustration 

 of the influence of scion upon stock in inducing variegation has 

 been noticed in Mr Noble's nursery at Sunningdale. The 

 golden-variegated Weeping Mountain-Ash, two years grafted, 



