THE EDITOR'S ALPHABET OF GARDENING. 139 



u It is upon similar principles that the science of grafting is founded ; for if a 

 young branch, like the boy's finger, be chopped off by a clean cut, and the cut 

 extremities immediately joined, the descending pulp will thicken like the watery 

 part of the blood, and while it remains soft, the sap from the cut ends of the 

 sap vessels will force its way through to their continuation above in the cut slip, 

 which, if the process be successfully managed, will grow as well, or nearly, as if 

 it had never been cut. 



" If, again, instead of applying the same cut slip* to the part it was cut from, 

 a slip from another tree be applied, as if I had applied to the boy's finger the 

 tip of another boy's, chopped off by the same accident, there seems no good 

 reason to doubt that a similar healthy joining might by care be effected. In 

 the case of animals, indeed, such joinings are rare, because rarely tried; but in 

 garden plants they are exceedingly common ; for the purpose of continuing 

 esteemed varieties of fruits and flowers, accidentally produced by cultivation, 

 as well as for forwarding the fruiting of young trees — since seedlings require 

 years to arrive at a bearing state. 



" On examining the joining of a graft about a fortnight after it has been made, 

 I have found, as in a healing finger-cut, a number of small roundish grains, in 

 form of a thin layer, produced from the thickening of the pulp, and destined to 

 form the hard substance,f which in general projects a little externally, and the 

 scarj differs in appearance from the other parts of the bark. It is, however, 

 only in the space between the pulp-wood§ and the bark that the uniting sub- 

 stance is formed, and therefore it is evident the slip to be grafted must have 



b 



d 



b 



e 



* 



" a, a black-heart cherry tree, naturally of soft bark, and of large diameter, grafted on a bird- 

 cherry b, naturally hard, and of small diameter, c, the scar, much bulged, from the pulp being 

 interrupted in its descent, d, a paper birch, with a smooth thin bark grafted on the white birch. 

 e, with rough thick bark. /, the scar, where there is no bulging, because the descent of the pulp is 

 not interrupted. 



* " Technically, Scion." 

 $ " In Latin, Cicatrix.'" 



t " In Latin, Callus." 

 § "In Latin, Alburnum." 



