PROPAGATION BY GRAFTING. 
203 
as close a contiguity as possible of the vital portion of the one to the analogous 
part of the other ; or that the alburnum of each be in immediate contact. 
When it is remembered that the young graft has no resources of its own 
to supply its need of liquid nourishment, and that it is solely through the living- 
layer of the stock that an inter-communication can be established, and this 
sustenance furnished, the weight of the above declaration will not be dubious. It 
may consequently be asserted as a fundamental datum, that the nearer the stock 
and scion approach each other in size, and the greater amount of their several 
alburnums is brought together, the more speedy and sure will be the union. We 
place great stress upon the above condition, because, in the species of plants whose 
grafting we are about to recommend, it is more easily executed than in any others. 
That mode of operation, then, which, with the greatest simplicity, and the least 
liability to have the graft displaced by casualties, brings the largest quantity 
of living and life-sustaining matter into conjunction, is at once to be chosen. 
The ends that can be attained through the instrumentality of grafting are 
manifold, and hence there may be as many motives to its employment in floriculture. 
In the first place, there are some plants which will not root with facility from 
cuttings, and for such, some kind of grafting becomes the best, if not the only, way 
of propagation. Others, whose roots are meagre, or ill-adapted for enduring the 
dampness of our soils at particular periods, or whose habits of growth are spare and 
weakly, seem to seek a more luxuriant stock, and better media for sustentation, to 
render them more healthy, productive, and beautiful. There is a class, on the 
contrary, with a greater command of nutriment than is needful, and a habitude 
directly the converse of those just alluded to, which, when grafted on less exuberant 
stocks, gain a wonderful degree of dwarfness and proliferousness. Again, not a 
few exotic shrubs which we now retain in the greenhouse, might, by being grafted 
on hardy related species, be fitted to decorate our flower borders and more select 
shrubberies ; not through the nature of the scion being made more hardy, but by 
its thus having a connexion with roots inured to the British climate, less apt 
to imbibe too much moisture, and less susceptible of injury from cold. The last 
incentive to the practice of grafting we shall here enumerate, is one that is more 
suited to gratify a fanciful taste than to conduce to real ornament, though far from 
being incompatible with the latter. It is the insertion of the scions of several 
different plants on the same stock, so as to occasion a curious, and in some measure 
a discordant, assemblage. The agreeableness of the effect produced by this plan 
will be completely dependent on the similarity of character, as regards the mode 
and extent of growth of the species associated, leaving the diversity to be secured by 
the flowers, which ought also to expand almost simultaneously. 
In recording the points which distinguish the system of grafting now so current 
in nurseries, we must confine ourselves to those of leading interest. That which 
most prominently presents itself is the retention of the plants operated upon in a 
warm, moist, secluded atmosphere, thus accelerating the result of the process, and 
