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in a white mantle of pear-blossom,* or when bogs shall crunch 
acorns that have fallen from the overhanging elm. Possibly 
none of these things will come to pass, and yet others equally 
strange have happened, as we shall endeavour to show by and 
by, while much at least of what the old writers tell us is 
literally true. In hundreds of nurseries at this season pears 
are being grafted on quince stocks, apricots on plums, apples on 
crabs, so that Virgil’s statement, 
(i Nec longum tempus et ingens 
Exiit ad ccelum ramis felicibus arbos 
Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma,” 
is as much a matter of fact as that if we commit a ripe seed to 
the ground under favourable conditions it will spring up in 
due season. 
Who first among surgeons adopted the grafting process we do 
not know. Tagliacozzi ( Latine Taliacotius), who died in 1553, is 
the one most held in remembrance for his feats in requisitioning 
a portion of the skin of a bystander in order to supply the 
deficient organism of his patient. How this was done is told 
in language more expressive than polite by one Butler, and it 
may perhaps be said with justice that the “ learned Taliacotius ” 
owes his reputation among posterity more to the rhymes of 
Hudibras than to his own publications. John Hunter, who left 
very little unheeded as unworthy his attention, illustrated the 
grafting process by divers experiments, among which the most 
striking is perhaps the removal of the spur of a cock, and its 
successful implantation on to the comb. Hunter, too, practised a 
method of curing ulcers which has been revived within the last 
year or two by French surgeons, and carried out with much 
success in several of our own hospitals. The operation simply 
consists in the removal of minute pieces of healthy skin, and in 
their transfer to the diseased surface. Under fitting con- 
ditions, and with due precautions, adhesion takes place, the 
ulcer heals over, and what is usually a long and intractable 
sore is by these means rapidly and effectually cured. 
We do not propose in this paper to enter at any further 
length into the historical or chirurgical portion of the subject. 
Our intention is simply to treat it from a physiological point of 
view, and to allude to certain facts or allegations which, if 
confirmed, will be of no small importance scientifically and 
practically. 
* There is only a difference of one letter between the Greek words \ ut\ia = 
ash, and firi\ia= pear. Is it possible that Virgil, recalling what some Greek 
friends had told him, or what he had read in some Greek author, confused 
the ash and the pear P This is hardly likely, and would not account for the* 
other anomalous cases of grafting ; nevertheless, the similarity is suggestive. 
