CHAPTER III. 



PROPAGATION BY BUDDING AND GRAFTING, B^ 

 LAYERS AND BY CUTTINGS. 



WHEN trees are raised from seeds, as before stated, there is 

 no certainty that the same identical variety will be repro- 

 duced. In many cases, the shade of variation will be scarcely 

 perceptible ; in others, it will be wide and distinct. It hence 

 becomes desirable in preventing a return toward the original 

 wild state, or, in other words, to perpetuate the identical in- 

 dividual thus highly improved, to adopt some other mode 

 of propagation, for the purpose of multiplying trees of such 

 varieties as possess a high excellence, instead of constantly 

 creating new ones, with the hazard of most of them proving 

 worthless. 



It will be distinctly remembered that new varieties nearly 

 always spring from seeds; but the same individual variety 

 can be multiplied only by separating the buds, or shoots bear- 

 ing the buds, of such individual plant. As an example, the 

 Fall Pippin, when first produced from seed, was a single tree 

 of a new variety. The myriads of Fall Pippin trees now ex- 

 isting are only multiplications of the branches of the original. 

 This multiplication or propagation of varieties is effected in 

 several ways: i, by Cuttings; 2, Layers; 3, Grafting; 4, Bud- 

 ding. Without these means of propagation, such delicious 

 sorts as the Green Gage plum, the Elton cherry, and the 

 Seckel pear, could never have been tasted except as picked 

 from the single parent tree. 



In the multitude of different modes of grafting and budding, 

 success must depend on the observance of certain funda- 

 mental principles ; a brief recapitulation, in part, of some of 

 these laid down in the second chapter may not be out of 

 place. 



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