IS GRAFTACE DEVITALIZING ? 93 



and a few of them had been grafted on the trunk about 

 three or four feet high, when they were as large as broom- 

 sticks, the whole top having been cut off when the opera- 

 tion was performed. A few trees which chanced to bear 

 tolerable fruit, scattered here and there through the orchard, 

 were not grafted. The orchard has been, therefore, an 

 e.xcellent experiment in grafting. Many of the trees in 

 this old orchard have died from undeterminable causes, and 

 it is an interesting fact that fully half, and probably even 

 more, of the deaths have been seedling trees which were 

 for many years just as vigorous in every way as the grafted 

 trees ; and of the trees that remain, the grafted specimens 

 are in every way as vigorous, hardy and productive as the 

 others. Some of these trees have two tops, one of which 

 was grafted shoulder high in the early days, and the other 

 grafted into the resulting top many years later. And those 

 trees which contain both original branches and grafted ones 

 in the same top show similar results— the foreign branches 

 are in every way as vigorous, virile and productive as the 

 others, and they are proving to be just as long-lived. Here, 

 then, is a positive experiment compassed by the lifetime of 

 one man, which shows that own-rooted trees are not al- 

 ways "infinitely better, healthier, and longer-lived" than 

 grafted plants. This illustration may be considered as a 

 type of thousands of orchards, containing various fruits, 

 in all parts of the country. The fact may be cited that 

 the old seedling orchards which still remain to us about 

 the country are much more uneven and contain more 

 dead trees or vacant places than the commercial grafted 

 orchards of even the same age. This is due to the strug- 

 gle for existence in the old orchards, by which the weak 

 trees have disappeared, while the grafted orchards, being 

 made up of selected varieties of known virility and hardi- 

 ness, have remained more nearly intact, and if the seed- 

 ling orchards have suffered more than the grafted ones, 

 it must be because they have had more weak spots. 



The universal favor in which graftage is held in Amer- 



