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XXXVI. UPON THE PROPAGATION OF VARIETIES OF THE WALNUT- 

 TREE, BY BUDDING. 



[Read before the HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, April 1th, 1818.] 



THE ill success of many attempts to propagate the walnut-tree by grafts, 

 or buds, led me, in a former communication, to discourage all attempts 

 to increase it, except by seeds, or by grafting by approach. I never- 

 theless continued, annually, to make a few experiments, with the hope of 

 discovering a method of budding, which would prove successful in the 

 culture of varieties of this fruit, and of others of equally difficult pro- 

 pagation ; and I have found, in ultimate success, the usual reward of 

 patient perseverance. 



The advantages of propagating varieties of the walnut-tree, by bud- 

 ding, will, I think be found considerable, provided the buds be taken 

 from young, or even middle-aged healthy trees : for, exclusive of the 

 advantage of obtaining fruit from very young trees, the planter will be 

 enabled to select not only such varieties as afford the best fruit, but also 

 such as endure best, as timber- trees, the vicissitudes of our climate. 

 In this respect some degree of difference is almost always observable in 

 the constitution of each individual seedling tree ; and this is invariably 

 transferred with the graft or bud. 



The walnut, it is true, as a fruit, contains but little nutriment, and 

 perhaps constitutes, at best, only an unwholesome luxury : but the tree 

 affords timber of much greater strength and elasticity, comparatively 

 with its very low specific gravity, than any other of British growth, and 

 it is consequently applicable to purposes for which no good substitute has 

 hitherto been found ; the stocks of the musket of the soldier, and of the 

 gun of the sportsman. 



The buds of trees, of almost every species, succeed with most certainty, 

 when inserted in the shoots of the same year's growth ; but the walnut- 

 tree appears to afford an exception ; possibly in some measure because its 

 buds contain, within themselves, in the spring, all the leaves which the 

 tree bears in the following summer ; whence its annual shoots wholly 

 cease to elongate soon after its buds unfold ; all its buds of each season 

 are also, consequently, very nearly of the same age : and long before 

 any have acquired the proper degree of maturity for being removed, the 

 annual branches have ceased to grow longer, or to produce new foliage. 



To obviate the disadvantages arising from the preceding circumstances, 

 I adopted means of retarding the period of the vegetation of the stocks, 



