THE GARDENER. 



39 



arrested by such causes as naturally limit the growth 

 of the parent tree. Propagation by cuttings, it is 

 true, will equally continue the variety unchanged ; 

 but that process in numerous instances is slow: in 

 others success is not attainable to any considerable 

 extent. 



From what has been stated, the great importance 

 and utility of the process about to be explained will be 

 sufficiently evident. 



" The limits within which grafting may be effected 

 extend to species and varieties of the same genus, or 

 at all events are confined within the same natural 

 order. Hence the statements of the ancients having 

 successfully grafted the olive on the fig, plums on 

 pears, and the like, are not to be credited. Modern 

 physiologists explain to us that such incongruities 

 cannot take place, and repeated experiments have 

 proved their assertions to be correct. The Romans 

 understood and practised the art of grafting ; but it 

 is evident that they were in a great measure ignorant 

 of its principles, for Pliny mentions some apples in his 

 time so red that they resembled blood ; and the rea- 

 son he assigns is, their having been at first grafted on 

 a mulberry stock ! Tricks are so common in grafting, 

 that Thouin, who wrote a treatise upon the subject, 

 calls one the rogue's graft (greffe des charlatans) : 

 this is not at all uncommon in Italy at the present 

 day, and is one of the means by which the needy but 

 clever Italian succeeds in enriching himself at the ex- 

 pense of the wealthy and dull-witted Northman. In 

 a state of nature a birch has been seen growing out of 

 a cherry-tree ; but on inspection it was easy to per- 

 ceive that a seed of the buxh had vegetated in a cre- 

 vice, communicating with the decayed centre of the 

 cherry-tree, among the vegetable mould of which the 

 birch seed had taken root. The Italian, by a similar 

 process, makes an olive, a jasmine, a rose, and a 



