212 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY 
The power of living plants to assimilate the food manu- 
factured by others is taken advantage of in the processes 
of grafting and budding. In these operations a slip of 
a particular plant is inserted into a wound made in the stem 
of another nearly related one, and the two are closely bound 
together. The graft or scion comes into such close connec- 
tion with the stem or stock that the food which is contained 
in the cells of the latter passes into the tissues of the graft, 
which thus receive their nourishment. After a longer or 
shorter time the two become so completely united that they 
live subsequently as a single organism, and the processes of 
carbohydrate and protein construction proceed as in a 
normal plant. 
