INFLUENCE OF THE STOCK. 23 



and the other the portion above it. In this case the lower band- 

 age is removed as soon as the bud has taken, and the upper left 

 for two or three weeks longer. This, by arresting the upward 

 sap, completes the union of the upper portion of bud, ('which in 

 plums frequently dies, while the lower part is united,) and se- 

 cures success. 



Reversed shield budding^ which is nothing more than making 

 the cross cut at the bottom, instead of the top of the upright in- 

 cision in the bark, and inserting the bud from below, is a good 

 deal practised in the south of Europe, but we have not found 

 that it possesses any superiour merit for fruit trees. 



An ingenious application of budding, worthy the attention of 

 amateur cultivators, consists in using a blossom-bud instead of 

 a wood-bud; when, if the operation is carefully done, blossoms 

 and fruit will be produced at once. This is most successful 

 with the Pear, though we have often succeeded also with the 

 Peach. Blossom-buds are readily distinguished, as soon as well 

 formed, by their roundness, and in some trees by their growing 

 in pairs; while w^ood-buds grow singly, and are more or less 

 pointed. We have seen a curious fruit growler borrow in this 

 way, in September, from a neighbor ten miles distant, a single 

 blossom-bud of a rare new pear, and produce from it a fair and 

 beautiful fruit the next summer. The bud, in such cases, should 

 be inserted on a favourable limb of a bearing tree. 



Annular budding, Fig. 13, we have found a 



valuable mode for trees with hard wood, and 



thick bark, or those which, like the walnut, have 



buds so large as to render it difficult to bud them 



in the common way. A ring of bark, when the 



sap is flowing freely, is taken from the stock, a, 



and a ring of corresponding size containing a 



bud, b, from the scion. If the latter should be 



too large, a piece must be taken from it to make 



Fie'. 13. it fit; or should all the scions be too small, 



Annular budding, the ring upon the stock may extend only three 



fourths the way round, to suit the ring of the bud. 



An a2y2)lication of this mode of great value occasionally occurs 

 in this country. In snowy winters, fruit trees in orchards are 

 sometimes girdled at the ground by field mice, and a growth 

 of twenty years is thus destroyed in a single day, should the 

 girdle extend quite round the tree. To save such a tree, it is 

 only necessary, as soon as the sap rises vigorously in the spring, 

 to apply a new ring of bark in the annular mode taken from a 

 branch of proper size ; tying it firmly, covering it with grafting 

 clay to exclude the air, and finally drawing up the earth so as 

 to cover the wound completely. When the tree is too large to 

 apply an entire ring, separate pieces, carefully fitted, will an- 

 swer ; and it is well to reduce the top somewhat by pruning 



