UPON GRAFTING THE WALNUT TREE. 327 



The fluid which the seeds of the walnut-tree contain, when that is 

 fully prepared to germinate in the spring, and which was deposited 

 within it for the purpose of affording nutriment to the seminal buds, or 

 plumule, in the preceding autumn, is sweet, as in a great many other 

 kinds of seeds : but during germination this becomes, in the seed of the 

 walnut-tree, bitter and acrid. Similar changes take place in the sap 

 which is deposited, for analogous purposes, in the bark and wood of the 

 walnut-tree, during the germination of its buds ; and I was led by the 

 discoveries of M. Dutrochet to infer the probability, that the sap during, 

 and subsequent to, its chemical changes, might acquire new and more 

 extensive vital powers. I therefore resolved to suffer the buds of my 

 grafts, and those of the stocks, to which I proposed to apply them, to 

 unfold, and to grow during a week or ten days ; then to destroy all the 

 young shoots and foliage, and to graft at a subsequent period. A very 

 severe frost in the morning of the 7th of May saved me the trouble of 

 destroying the young shoots ; but it deranged my experiment by killing 

 much of the slender annual wood, which I proposed to use for grafts ; so 

 that I found some difficulty in choosing proper grafts. The swelling of 

 the small, and previously almost invisible, buds, within a few days enabled 

 me to distinguish the living wood from that which had been killed by the 

 frost, and the stocks were grafted upon the 18th day of May. My grafter 

 had more than once been previously employed by me to graft walnut- 

 trees in various ways, and never having in any degree succeeded, he did 

 not seem at all pleased with the task assigned him, and very confidently 

 foretold that every graft would die : and I subsequently found that he 

 had insured, to some extent, the truth of his prophesy, by having applied 

 grafts which were actually dead. The whole number employed was 

 twenty-eight, and out of these twenty-two grew well ; generally very 

 vigorously, many producing shoots of nearly a yard long, and of very 

 great strength ; and the length of the longest shoot exceeding a yard and 

 five inches. The grafts were attached to the young (annual) wood of 

 stocks, which were between five and eight feet high ; and in all cases 

 they were placed to stand astride the stocks, one division being in some 

 instances introduced between the bark and the wood ; and both divisions 

 being, in others, fitted to the wood or bark in the ordinary way. Both 

 modes of operating were equally successful. In each of these methods of 

 grafting it is advantageous to pare away almost all the wood of both the 

 divisions of the grafts ; and therefore the wide dimensions of the medulla 

 in the young shoots of the walnut-tree do not present any inconvenience to 

 the grafter. 



