120 BUDDING. 



the graft has grown a season or two, its awkward 

 seat may be reduced, so as to encourage the closing 

 of the bark. In improving the operation, having 

 smoothed the horizontal cut, take out, on the side 

 of the stump, a wedge-shaped piece of the bark, 

 two inches long, of a breadth, at the upper end, 

 equal to the diameter of the young shoot ; give the 

 slip a splice cut of the same length, and take a little 

 off each edge of the splice, bringing the extremity to 

 a point: set the point into the place prepared for its 

 reception, and press it gently down to a perfect 

 adaptation of the bark in all parts: and then apply 

 the fastening and clay as above directed. This is 

 the neatest of all the methods of engrafting, and 

 the least liable to fail or produce canker by any 

 fungous or unnatural growth. 



Intimately connected with grafting is the nice 

 art of inserting a bud, from which proceeds a shoot, 

 then branches, and then a large spreading and fruit- 

 bearing tree, possessing in all its parts the same 

 qualities and producing the same fruits as that 

 from which the bud was at first abstracted. This 

 is one of the greatest wonders of art; and as we 

 do not see any natural process at all analogous to 

 this, or any ready way of anticipating the effect, 

 the first conception of the thing, giving rise to the 

 experiment, is to be regarded as one of the most 

 beautiful of human inventions. Certain parasiti- 

 cal plants which grow upon other trees afford no 

 analogy. In this case the sap of the tree becomes 

 merely the pabulum of the heterogeneous plant; 



