INFLUENCE OF THE STOCK. 28 
and the other the portion above it. In this case the lower band. 
age is removed as soon as the bud has taken, and the upper left 
for two or three weeks longer. This, ‘by arresting the upward 
sap, completes the un.on of the upper portion of bud, (which in 
plums frequently dies, while the lower part is dere and se 
cures success. : 
Reversed shield budding, which is nothing more than making 
the cross cut at the bottom, instead of the top of the upright in 
cision in the bark, and inserting the bud from below, is a good 
deal practised in the south. of Europe, but we have not found 
that it possesses any superiour merit for fruit trees. 
An ingenious application of budding, worthy the attention of 
amateur cultivators, consists in using a blossom-bud instead of 
a wood-bud; when, if the operation is carefully done, blossoms 
‘and fruit will be produced at once. This is most successful 
with the Pear, though we have often succeeded also with the 
Peach. Blossom-buds are readily distinguished, as soon as well 
formed, by their roundness, and in some trees by their growing 
in pairs; while wood-buds grow singly, and aré more or less 
pointed. We have seen a curious fruit grower borrow in this 
way, in September, from a neighbor ten miles distant, a single 
blossom-bud of a rare new pear, and produce from it a fair and 
beautiful fruit the next summer. The bud, in such cases, should 
be inserted on a favourable limb of a bearing’ tree. 
Annular budding, Fig, 13, we have found a 
valuable mode for trees with hard wood, and 
thick bark, or those which, like the walnut, have 
_ buds so large as to render it difficult to bud them 
in the common way. <A ring of bark, when the 
sap is flowing freely, is taken from the stock, a, 
and a ring of corresponding size containing a 
bud, 5, from the scion. If the latter should be 
too large, a piece must be taken from it to make 
Fig. 13. it fit; or should all the scions be too small, 
Annular budding. the ring upon the stock may extend only three 
fourths the way round, to suit the ring of the bud. 
An application of this mode of great value occasionally occurs 
in this country. In snowy winters, fruit trees in orchards are 
sometimes girdled at the ground by field mice, and a growth 
of twenty ycars is thus destroyed in a single day, should the 
girdle extend quite round the tree. To save such a tree, it is 
only necessary, as soon as the sap rises vigorously in the spring, 
to apply a new ring of bark in the annular mode taken from a 
branch of proper size; tying it firmly, covering it with grafting _ 
clay to exclude the air, and finally drawing up the earth so as 
to cover the wound completely. When the tree is too large to 
apply an entire ring, separate pieces, carefully fitted, will an- 
ewer; and it is well to reduce the top somewhat by pruning 
