64 THE GRAPE CCJLTUBIST. 



any other means at command, then it becomes very 

 important to know how to perform the operation success- 

 fully. There are usually, in every garden where grapes 

 are grown, inferior varieties which it is desirable to 

 exchange for better, and if we employ grafting as a 

 method of propagation, then these otherwise worthless 

 vines may become valuable as stocks on which to graft 

 better kinds ; and if, by the use of these, we can make 

 every bud to produce a shoot of from five to twenty feet 

 in a single season, of larger and better wood than we can 

 by any other means, and that, too, without the aid of 

 any artificial heat, it becomes very important to know 

 how to do it. Sometimes it would be desirable to change 

 a whole vineyard from an inferior variety to a new and 

 superior one, and if the operation is judiciously per- 

 formed, it can be successfully done, as has been exten- 

 sively practiced of late years in France, where they have 

 used the strong growing, phylloxera-resisting American 

 species as stocks upon which to graft the more suscep- 

 tible but better wine grapes of Europe, and the time may 

 not be very far distant when this will have to be prac- 

 ticed in California, where the exotic varieties are culti- 

 vated almost exclusively. 



Everyone who has ever read the European works on 

 grape culture, and especially those of France, must have 

 noticed how much space is devoted to this subject of 

 grafting, and it would not be at all difficult to gather 

 enough material to fill a half dozen large volumes on this 

 mode of propagating the vine. But when all these 

 voluminous essays are condensed to practical limits, the 

 difference consists mainly in the diversity of opinions of 

 their authors in regard to the time and mode of perform- 

 ing the operation ; and the success of the operator, with 

 one and all, probably depends more upon his skill in 

 manipulation than in anything else. 



In grafting the grape, as with other ligneous plants, 

 the operator may vary the process by cutting the stock 



