100 AMERICAN POMOLOGY. 



grapes, there is a diversity of opinion. Some operators 

 prefer very early in the season, as in February, and others 

 wait until the leaves have appeared upon the vine to be 

 grafted. 



SCIONS OB GBAFTS are to be selected from healthy plants 

 of the variety we wish to propagate. They should be 

 the growth of the previous year, of average size, well de- 

 veloped, and with good buds, those having flower buds 

 are rejected. If the shoots be too strong, they are often 

 furnished with poor buds, and are more pithy, and there- 

 fore they are more difficult to work and are less likely to 

 grow. Grafts, cut from young bearing orchards, are the 

 best, and being cut from fruiting trees, this enables 

 us to be certain as to correctness of the varieties to 

 be propagated ; but they are generally and most rapidly 

 collected from young nursery trees, and as an orchardist 

 or nurseryman should be able to judge of all the varieties 

 he cultivates by the appearance of their growth, foliage, 

 bark, dots, etc., there is little danger in taking the scions 

 from such untested trees. 



Time for cutting Scions. The scions may be cut at any 

 time after the cessation of growth in the autumn, even be- 

 fore the leaves have fallen, until the buds burst in the 

 spring, always avoiding severely cold or frosty weather, 

 because of the injury to the tree that results from cutting 

 at such a time, though the frost may not have injured the 

 scion. The best nurserymen prefer to cut them in the au- 

 tumn, before they can have been injured by cold. They 

 should be carefully packed in fine earth, sand, or saw- 

 dust, and placed in the cellar or cave. The leaves strip- 

 ped from them, make a very good packing material ; moss 



