VI. PLANTING. 



inclined to fruitfulness. Choose a cloudy day, if you 

 have a choice of days at this season, and, if not, perform 

 your work early in the morning, or in the evening. The 

 time being proper, you sever the branch on which you 

 find buds to your liking. Take this with you to the stock 

 that you are going to bud. Holding the branch in your 

 left hand, the largest end downward, make a sloping cut 

 from about an inch and a half below the bud, to about 

 an inch above it, suffering your knife to go through the 

 bark and about half way into the wood, cutting out wood 

 and all. This keeping of the wood prevents the bud and 

 its bark from drying while you are preparing the incision 

 in the stock j and, if you wish to carry buds of scarce 

 sorts to any distance, you may do so safely by putting 

 their ends in water or in damp moss, but it is always 

 safer, as well in grafting as in budding, to perform the 

 operation with as much expedition as possible, but par- 

 ticularly it is so in budding. 



915. Operation of budding. Cut off the leaf under which 

 the bud is seated, but leave its foot-stalk (pi. 5. fig. 2. a.) 

 and, by this, hold it between your lips, while, with your 

 budding-knife, you cut two straight lines in the stock at 

 the place where you wish to insert the bud, and this 

 should be at a place where the bark is smooth, free from 

 any bruises or knots, and on the side rather from the 

 mid-day sun. Of these lines, let the first be horizontal, 

 (pi. 5.fig.l. a.) and let the next be longitudinal, beginning 

 at the middle of the first cut, and coming downward 

 (pi. 5. fig. 1. 6). Let them, in short, describe the two 

 principal bars of the Roman letter T. You have now to 

 take out from the bark on which your bud is, the piece 





