No. 151.] 459 



tion of grafting," " There are apples," continues he, " that hare 

 ennobled the countries from which they came; and our best varieties 

 will honor their first grafters forever; such as took their names from 

 Matius, Cestius, Manlius and Claudius." He particularizes the 

 " quince-apples," that came from a quince grafted upon an apple- 

 stock, which smelled like a quince, and were called " Appianna,^^ 

 after Appius, of the house of Claudius. It must be confessed how- 

 ever, that Pliny has related so many particulars as facts, concerning 

 the apple, (such as changing the fruit to the color of blood, by graft- 

 ing it on the mulberry; and the tree in the Tyburtines country, 

 " grafted and laden with all manner of fruits," which are regarded 

 by modern grafters as physiological impossibilities,) it would seem 

 that very little confidence could be placed in his statements of any 

 kind. But what reason have we to doubt the authority of a man, 

 ■whose life was devoted to the benefit of mankind, and whose death 

 was caused by his perseverance in search of truth? Instances of 

 grafting trees of different families upon one another, are also men- 

 tioned by other old authors, and even our Evelyn, of more recent 

 times, states that he saw in Holland, a rose engrafted upon the 

 orange. Columella, a practical husbandman, who wrote some years 

 before Pliny, describes three methods of grafting, as handed down to 

 him, by whom he calls the " ancients," besides a fourth method of 

 his own, and a mode of inarching, or grafting by approach, " where- 

 by all sorts of grafts may be grafted upon all sorts of trees." 



The art of grafting, as well as that of pruning, has been ascribed 

 to accidental origin. The occasional natural union or inarching of 

 the boughs of distinct trees in the forest, is thought to have first sug- 

 gested the first idea of grafting; and the more vigorous shooting of a 

 vine, after a goat had browsed upon it, is said to have given rise to 

 the practice of pruning. 



The Quince. 



The Quince, {^Cydonia vulgaris,) is supposed to have been origi- 

 nally, a native of Sidon, a city of ancient Crete, now the island of 

 Candia; but it is much more probable that it was only first brought 

 into notice in that city. It is considered at present, as indigenous 

 to the south of France, particularly on the borders of the Garonne, 

 and to Germany on the banks of the Danube. 



It was known to the Greeks and the Romans, and both nations 

 held it in high estimation. Columella says: " Quinces not only yield 

 pleasure, but health." He speaks of three kinds: — th^ " Struthian,'' 



