132 



TRUiTS. 



[chap. 



SO essential that the slightest deviation will defeat the purpose. 

 In this sort of grafting, the stock on which you graft is generally 

 strong enough to hold the scion close enough within its cleft with- 

 out the aid of binding, and then it is better not to bind ; but, as it 

 is also necessary to prevent *air circulating within the wounded 

 parts both of the stock and the scion, use grafting-clay to cover 

 them over so as effectually to exclude that air, and cover the clay 

 with a piece of coarse canvas, wetting it first, and then binding it 

 on securely. In this way, the stock being strong, you may insert 

 several scions on the same head, by making several different clefts, 

 and putting one scion in each ; but this can only be to ensure your 

 having two to succeed, for, if all the scions that you can put upon 

 one head take, you must choose the two most eligible, and sacri- 

 fice the rest, as more than two leading limbs from such head ought 

 not to be encouraged. The season for performing this sort of 

 grafting, and the mode of preparing the scion, and the future 

 treatment of the tree, are precisely the same as in Tongue-grafting . 



212. I have mentioned an application of clay to be used in 

 grafting : but it may be as well here to give some particular in- 

 structions as to preparing this, bejore 1 end this article on graft- 

 ing. The object being to put something round the wounded part 

 of the stock and the scion that shall exclude water and air, it is 

 necessary, of course, that the application be adhesive and close. 

 Pure yellow or blue clay is both, if you beat it well with a good 

 stout stick, now-and-then pouring on a little water to make it 

 w'ork. Get it, in this way, to be perfectly pliable in the hand. 

 Beat it upon a hard stone, or a boarded floor, or a brick floor 

 swept clean first ; but beat it again and again, returning to it for 

 two or three days, and taking a spell each day. If you suffer it to 

 remain hard, besides the danger of unsettling the scion in squeezing 

 round it this untractable mass, it cracks, the very first hot day, and 

 is utterly useless. Let it, therefore, be so loose that the man who 

 follows the grafter, to put it on, can take off* a piece and readily 

 flatten it out into a kind of pancake, an inch or so thick, and 

 wrap it, without any exertion on his part, or any resistance on the 

 part of the plant, round the grafted tree. Then he should sprinkle 

 a little wood-ashes over the whole to dry it, and prevent its 

 cracking from the heat of the sun. 



213. BUDDING is performed for precisely the same purpose 

 as grafting, and, like grafting, it is performed in many different 



