86 GRAFTAGE. 



per se, is not wrong, however many cases there may be 

 to which it is not adapted. 



2. The proposition that graftage is unnatural, and there- 

 fore pernicious, is no more nor less than a fallacy. In the 

 first place, there is nothing to show that it is any more 

 unnatural than the making of cuttings, and if naturalness is 

 proved by frequency of occurrence in nature, then graftage 

 must be considered the more natural process of the two, as 

 already shown. One of the most determined writers upon 

 this subject has said that " it is quite fair to say that raising 

 a. tree from seed, or a shrub by pulling it in pieces [cut- 

 tings] is a more natural mode of increase than by grafting." 

 It is difficult to understand by what token the author is to 

 prove that pulling a plant in pieces is more natural than 

 graftage; and there appears to have been no attempt to 

 show that it is so. 



But the whole discussion of the mere naturalness of any 

 operation is really aside from the question, for every opera- 

 tion in the garden is in some sense unnatural, whether it be 

 transplantation, pruning, or tillage ; and it is well known 

 that these unnatural processes may sometimes increase 

 the longevity and virility of the plant. Plants which are 

 given an abundance of food and are protected from insects 

 and fungi and the struggle with other plants, are better 

 equipped than those left entirely to nature. It is the com- 

 monest notion that cultivation is essentially an artificial 

 stimulus, that it excites the plant to performances really 

 beyond its own power, and therefore devitalizes it. But this 

 is a fallacy. All plants and animals in a state of nature 

 possess more power than they are able to express, and they 

 are held in a state of equilibrium, as Herbert Spencer puts 

 it, by the adaptation to environment. Once the pressure of 

 existing environments is removed, the plant springs into the 

 breach and takes on some new features of size, robustness, 

 or prolificacy, or distributes itself in new directions. The 

 whole series of benefits which arise from a change of seed 

 is a familiar proof of this fact. So that, if cultivation, 



