GRAFTING BY DETACHED SCIONS. 



287 



hands, and for remaining on in wet weather, and dry weather, without 

 cracking. The beating is performed with a beetle or rammer (fig. 87 in 

 p. 136), on a smooth hard floor under cover, turning over the mass, and adding 

 water, and then beating afresh, till it becomes sufficiently softened and duc- 

 tile. The process of beating must be repeated two or three times a day for 

 several days ; and it should be completed from three weeks to a month be- 

 fore the clay is wanted ; care being taken to preserve it in a moist state, by 

 covering it with mats or straw. The grafting-clay used by the French 

 gardeners is composed of equal parts of cow-dung, free from litter, and 

 fresh loam, thoroughly beaten up and incorporated. 



649. Grafting-wax is very generally used on the Continent, instead of 

 grafting-clay. There are various recipes for composing it, but they may 

 all be reduced to two kinds : — 1. Those which being melted, are laid on 

 the graft in a fluid and hot state with a brush ; and 2, those which are pre- 

 viously spread on pieces of coarse cotton, or brown paper, and afterwards 

 wrapped round the graft in the same manner as strands of matting. The 

 common composition for the first kind is one pound of cow-dung, half a 

 pound of pitch, and half a pound of yellow wax, boiled up together, and 

 heated when wanted in a small earthen pot. For the second kind, equal 

 parts of turpentine, bees- wax, and rosin are melted together. 



§ VII. — Grafting by Detached Scions. 



650. Grafting by detached scions is the most common mode, and it is 

 that generally used for kernel-fruits, and the hardier forest-trees. It 

 is performed in a great many different ways, as may easily be con- 

 ceived, when we consider that the only essential condition is the close 

 connexion of the alburnum of the scion with that of the stock. Upwards 

 of forty modes of grafting by detached ligneous scions have been described 

 by Thouin ; but we shall confine ourselves to a few which we consider 

 best adapted for general use. The time for grafting hardy trees and 

 shrubs by detached scions in England is generally in spring, when the sap 

 is rising ; but the vine, if grafted before it is in leaf, suff'ers from bleeding. 

 In Germany and North America, grafting is frequently performed in 

 the winter time on roots or stocks which have been preserved in sheds or 

 cellars ; and the scion being put on and tied and clayed over, the grafted 

 stock is kept till the spring, and then taken out and planted. W^here 

 scions are grafted on roots, this practice is sometimes followed in British 

 nurseries, as in the case of pears and roses. Plants under glass may be 

 grafted at almost any period ; and herbaceous grafting, when and wherever 

 performed, can, of course, only succeed when the shoots of the scion and 

 stock are in a succulent or herbaceous state. In all the different modes of 

 grafting by detached scions, success is rendered more certain, when the sap 

 of the stock is in a more advanced and vigorous state than that of the scion ; 

 for which purpose the scions are generally taken off^ in autumn, and their 

 vegetation retarded, by keeping them in a shady place till spring ; and the 

 stock is cut over a little above the part where the scion is to be put on, a 

 week or two before grafting takes place. The manual precautions necessary 

 to success are : to fit the scion to the stock in such a manner that the union 

 of their inner barks, and consequently of their alburnums, may be as close 

 as possible ; to cut the scion in such a manner, as that there shall be a bud 

 or joint at its lower extremity, and the stock so that there shall be a bud 



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