82 



GRAFTAGE. 



the Peninsula Horticultural Society at Dover, Delaware, in 

 1892, and printed in the transactions of the society, is here 

 reproduced : 



To the popular mind there seems to be something mys- 

 terious in the process of graftage. People look upon it as 

 something akin to magic, and entirely opposed to the laws 

 of nature. It is popularly thought to represent the extreme 

 power which man exercises over natural forces. It is 

 strange that this opinion should 

 prevail in these times, for the 

 operation itself is very simple, 

 and the process of union is 

 nothing more than the healing 

 of a wound. It is in no way 

 more mysterious than the root- 

 ing of cuttings, and it is not so 

 unnatural, if by this expression 

 we refer t > the relative fre- 

 quency of the occurrences of 

 the phenomena in nature. Nat- 

 ural grafts are by no means rare 

 among forest trees, and occa- 

 sionally the union is so com- 

 plete that the foster stock en- 

 tirely supports and nourishes 

 the other. A perfect inarch- 

 graft, by means of which two 

 oak trees have united into one, 

 is shown in Fig. 82. Cuttings of 

 stems, however, are very rare 

 among wild plants ; in fact, there is but one common 

 instance, in the north, in which stem cuttings are made 

 entirely without the aid of man, and that is the case of cer- 

 tain brittle willows whose branchlets are easily cast by wind 

 and snow into streams and moist places, where they some- 

 times take root. But mere unnaturalness of any operation 

 has no importance in discussions of phenomena attaching 



Sz. A natural graft of forest trees. 



