PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 



This manual was first published in 1891, by the 

 Rural Publishing Company. In 1892, the publishers 

 made a second edition from the same plates ; and 

 both editions are exhausted. The book has had no 

 revision or corrections, therefore, until the present 

 time. It has enjoyed a popularity far beyond its 

 merits, and it has, therefore, seemed worth while to 

 fully revise and recast it, and to make it one of the 

 Garden-Craft Series. 



In this revision, it has seemed best to give a some- 

 what full discussion of the too prevalent assumption that 

 graftage is necessarily a devitalizing process, and to 

 analyze the unclassified knowledge respecting the mutual 

 influences of stock and cion, and the respective peculi- 

 arities of root-grafted and budded fruit trees. Some- 

 thing has also been said respecting the so-called 

 exhaustion of nursery land, and of various other nur- 

 sery matters upon which there seems to be much mis- 

 imderstanding. The Nursery List now comprises the 

 notes and suggestions of many correspondents, and the 

 results of the experience and experiment of five addi- 

 tional years. The entire volume has been thoroughly 

 ran.sacked and renovated, and in this work I have 

 (vii) 



