Grafting the Vine. ^9 



GRAFTING THE VINE. 



Your correspondent Mr. Samuel Miller gives the true season for graft- 

 ing the vine successfully. We have tried grafting the vine at various 

 seasons of the j'ear, but never succeeded except during its period of 

 growth ; and this is the necessary state or condition plants should be 

 in to be successfully operated on. It should be remembered, however, 

 that there is always something more wanted than a mere description 

 of a mechanical operation. For instance, we may tell your readers that 

 cuttings of fuchsias should be made two inches long, put in sand, and 

 bottom-heat applied ; which will insure their rooting with ordinary care. 

 But watch the novice and the man of experience at this simple operation. 

 The former will take any piece of wood that comes first to his knife, and 

 most likely that which is perfectly hard, but succeeds in striking some 

 of them in the course of perhaps four or five weeks' time ; while the 

 latter, finding his plants in a hard, ripened condition, will lightly cut back 

 the points of the shoots, place them in good strong heat, and take off 

 the cuttings in quite a soft, sappy condition of two joints, and root them 

 in about eight days, and not miss the rooting of one cutting in a thousand. 

 Here, then, lies the difference between a mere mechanical operation and 

 that of a necessary experience of the condition of things to a successful 

 act of the mechanical. We say, the vine can be as successfully grafted 

 as a willow can be rooted ; but the vine must be in a growing state. The 

 first leaves should be fully developed before attempting the operation. 

 This becomes requisite from the fact that the vine will not bleed in this 

 state : the crude sap with its great force has passed up through the 

 plant-tissue, changed its condition chemically through the agency of the 

 leaves, and, in the act of returning over the wood, is in a more glutinous 

 condition for the union of the scion to its fitted parts ; and thus the 

 alburnum of both scion and stock unite instantly. There is no uniting 

 of tlie duramen, or hard wood, as many suppose, but a formation of wood 

 over wood. Now, it will be seen, from what has been said, that the union 

 that is effected lies in the fact of the immediate uniting of the alburnum 

 of the two different parts which come in contact under the proper con- 



