338 . IV^ALNUT GEAFTING. 



Mr. Knight described his method in the following manner; — "The 

 fluid which the seeds of the Walnut-tree contain, when that is fully 

 prepared to germinate in the spring, and which was deposited within it 

 for the purpose of affording nutriment to the seminal buds, or plumule, 

 in the preceding autumn, is sweet, as in a great many other kinds of 

 seeds : but during germination this becomes, in the seed of the Walaut 

 tree, bitter and acrid. Similar changes take place in the sap which is 

 deposited, for analogous purposes, in the bark and wood of the Walnut- 

 tree, 'during the germination of its buds ; and I was led by the 

 discoveries of M. Dutrochet to infer the probability, that the sap 

 during, and subsequent to, its chemical changes, might acquire new 

 and more extensive vital powers. I therefore resolved to suffer the 

 buds of my grafts, and those of the stocks, to which I proposed to 

 apply them, to unfold, and to grow during a week or ten days ; then 

 to destroy all the young shoots and foliage, and to graft at a subsequent 

 period. A very severe frost in the morning of the 7th of Ma,y saved 

 me the trouble of destroying the young shoots ; but it deranged my 

 experiment, by killing much of the slender annual wood, which I pro- 

 posed to use for grafts ; so that I found some difficulty in choosing 

 proper grafts. The swelling of the small, and previously almost 

 invisible, buds, within a few days enabled me to distinguish the 

 living wood from that which had been killed by the frost, and the 

 stocks were grafted upon the 18th of May. My grafter had more than 

 once been previously employed by me to graft Walnut-trees in various 

 ways, and never having in any degree succeeded, he did not seem at all 

 pleased with the task assigned him, and very confidently foretold that 

 every graft would die : and I subsequently found that he had insureds 

 to some extent, the truth of his prophecy, by having applied grafts 

 which were actually dead. The whole number employed was twenty- 

 eight, and out of these twenty-two grew well; generally very 

 vigorously, many producing shoots of nearly a yard long, and of very 

 great strength ; and the length of the longest shoot exceeding a yard 

 and five inches. The grafts were attached to the young (annual) wood 

 of stocks, which were between five and eight feet high ; and ia all cases 

 they were placed to stand astride the stocks, one division being in some 

 instances introduced between the bark and the wood; and both 

 divisions being, in others, fitted to the wood or bark in the ordinary 

 way. Both modes of operating were equally successful. In each of 

 these methods of grafting it is advantageous to pare away almost all 

 the wood of both the divisions of the grafts ; and therefore the wide 

 dimensions of the medulla in the young shoots of the Walnut-tree do not 

 present any inconvenience to the grafter. No difficulties wiU hence- 

 forth, I conclude, occur in propagating varieties of Walnuts by grafting ; 

 and I am much inclined to believe, that different species and varieties of 

 Oaks may be successfully grafted by the same mode of management." 



