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GARDENING AS A SCIENCE. 
No. VI. 
One of the most, beautiful processes of horticulture is that of extending any- 
given species or variety of plant by grafting. To this subject we are now led, 
and we propose to take a view of it in its several branches. The practice itself is 
old, and it is partially known by the most humble cottager of the land ; but where 
shall we meet with the person who really understands, and can perspicuously 
interpret its surprising phenomena ? 
As a general principle, it will suffice to state that a branch or twig of a tree is, 
by one of the many modes of operating, inserted into the stem or branch of another 
tree of the same natural family — that the two members unite and form a new tree ; 
the head so produced retaining, constitutionally, its own precise character, unin- 
fluenced, so far as that is concerned, by the stock ; the latter at the same time 
being equally uninfluenced by the scion or graft, though that member develop 
hundreds of branches and laterals, the sum of which shall in bulk exceed that of the 
stock, now humbled to a mere prop, in manifold proportion. 
The erroneous conception that persons of comprehensive understanding have 
formed is surprising. We will, as a matter of mere curiosity, go back to the 
authority of the poet Virgil. In the second book of the " Georgics," lines 69 to 73, 
we find the following beautiful passage, which the classic scholar will admire, 
while, as a physiologist, he must repudiate the fallacy of its doctrine : — - 
" Inseritur vero ex foetu nucis arbutus horrida, 
Et steriles platani malos gessere valentes; 
Castaneee fagos, ornusque incanuit albo 
Flore pyri, glaudemque sues fregere sub ulmis." 
Is it to be wondered at, when we consider the importance that was once attached 
to the agricultural authority of this great Latin poet, that persons should adopt the 
notion of indiscriminate grafting, or believe that the arbutus might be united with 
the walnut, the fruitful apple with the barren plane-tree, the pear-tree with the 
flowering-ash, and the oak with the elm ? 
We are but too apt to ascribe this credulity to the ignorance of superstition, 
and doubtless there were (as there are now) jugglers who took advantage of 
simplicity ; but a fact is before us, discovered only three days since (June 1) while 
removing a dead box-tree from a shrubbery, which will prove how nature itself may 
assist in deluding those who do not minutely investigate. A branch of a very large 
Portugal laurel formed a knee, which gave it a horizontal direction about a yard 
above the ground. A few inches beyond the knee, this branch (an inch and half 
thick) came in contact with the upright stem of a strong pseud-acacia (Robinia 
VOL. IX.— no. en. s 
