46 FRUIT GARDEN. 
that the parents should be as healthy as possible. In the 
shy-bearing kinds it has been found beneficial to select 
shoots from the fruitful branches. The cions should be 
taken off some weeks before they. be wanted, and half-buried 
in the earth, as it is conducive to success that the stock 
should, in forwardness of vegetation, be somewhat in 
advance of the graft, During winter, grafts may be trans- 
ferred from great distances, as from America, or any part 
of the Continent of Europe, if carefully wrapped up in 
hypnum moss. If they have been six weeks or two months 
separated from the parent plant, they should be grafted 
low on the stock, and the earth should be ridged up around 
them, leaving only one bud of the cion above ground. Out 
of forty cions of new Flemish pears, procured by the depu- 
tation of the Caledonian Horticultural Society from Brus- 
sels and Louvain, in 1817, and treated in this way, only 
one failed.* 
Success in grafting depends almost entirely on accu- 
rately applying the inner bark of the cion to the inner bark 
of the stock, so that the sap may pass freely from the one 
to the other. They are therefore fitted together, and held 
fast by a bandage of strips of bast-matting. To lessen 
evaporation, a portion of ductile clay is moulded around 
the place of junction, and is retained until it appears, from 
the development of leaves, that the operation has succeeded. 
The best season for grafting is the month of March ; but it 
may be commenced as soon as the sap in the stock is fairly 
in motion, and may be continued during the first half of 
April. 
The most usual mode of grafting is called whip graft- 
* Among these were Beurre Ranz, Marie Louise, Capiaumont, Napoleon, 
Delices d’Hardenpont, Passe Colmar, and some others, which have acquired 
a high character in this country. 
