Liquid Grafting Wax. 81 
to take out as much wax as possible, and when the cloth is cold, 
tearing it up into half-inch strips for small grafts or wider strips 
for large grafts. While grafting is going on in-doors, these 
strips hanging near the stove are kept in good, soft condition 
for use. 
There are grafting preparations which do not require heat- 
ing, but remain in a semi-fluid state, and then become very hard 
by contact with the air. The following is a popular French 
preparation :— 
Melt one pound of resin over a gentle fire. Add to it one ounce of beef 
tallow, and stir it well. Take it from the fire, let it cool down a little, and 
then mix with it a tablespoonful of spirits of turpentine, and after that add 
about seven ounces of very strong alcohol. The alcohol cools it down so 
rapidly that it-will be necessary to put it once more on the fire, stirring it 
constantly. Great care is necessary to avoid igniting the alcohol. 
This wax is easily prepared, and when well corked will keep 
for six months. It is put on the wounded part of the tree, very 
thin, and soon becomes as hard as stone. Thus it is valuable 
not only for grafting, but for covering the scars caused by re- 
moving limbs in pruning. When bench grafting is done by 
nurserymen, of course all anpliances are arranged for the speed- 
iest work, and wonderful results are attained by one man and a 
helper, even as many as three thousand root grafts of apple in 
ten hours. We are, however, merely discussing home practises. 
Cleft Grafting—Where various-sized stocks are to be 
used, as will be the case with a bunch of home-grown seedlings, 
different styles of grafting must be used. Where the stock is 
much larger than the scion, as is apt to be the case with Cali- 
fornia seedlings, the cleft graft will be simplest. 
Cut off the top smoothly above the root crown 
and then split the top of the stock, as shown in 
the cngraving. Then prepare the scion by 
whittling it to wedge-shape at the = 
lower end. Open the slit in the 
stack with a little wedge and in- 
sert the scion so that its inner bark 
matches with the inner bark of the 
stock, something as shown in the 
second figure. It does not matter 
whether the outside of the scion is 
flush with the outside of the stock 
or not; the vital point is to get the Cishoecatiat RaseReaus: 
growing lavers just inside the barks 
in contact with each other, and, to be sure of this, it may be well 
to give the scion a slight diagonal pitch, for if the barks cross 
each other, this desirable contact is sure to be made. It is well 
to make the side of the wedge of the scion which goes nearer 
to the center of the stock a little thinner than the outside. 
