i6o 



NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



to the plants. The best of memories are apt to play all 

 sorts of pranks, and this is only a safe and easy precau- 

 tion. Label the flower, so that there can be no possibility 

 of mistake. When the seeds are ripe, plant them care- 

 fully in soil that has been thoroughly baked, or that you 

 are sure does not contain a single seed of the kind you 

 are to plant in it. With such seeds the chances are 

 greater that you may rear a flower 

 or fruit that combines the qualities 

 of both parents and is possibly the 

 finest of its kind in 

 the world. 



Layers, Run- 

 ners, Cuttings, 

 Grafts, and Buds. — I have 

 just stopped writing to go 

 down into the garden to count the 

 buds on this year's shoot of my 

 little Esopus tree. There are 57, 

 and this whole shoot was a single 

 bud last spring. On a similar shoot 

 of Burbank plum there were 173, on 

 a Royal George peach, 240, on a 

 Niagara grape, 91. A bud, except 

 a fruit bud, is in possibility a tree 

 The buds on a tree 

 produce shoots or trees that vary 

 little if at all from one another ; so, 

 in order to multiply a desirable variety, we have only to 

 place its buds where they may grow. 



Fig. 61. Cherry Twigs 



A growth shoot and fruit spurs. 

 A ^, S, 4, S> yearly growth 

 rings ; t, terminal buds ; 

 /, /, lateral or leaf buds. A 

 pointed leaf bud may be q£ jj.^ J^jjjfJ 

 seen in the center of each 

 cluster of fruit buds 



