146 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
that is is at present in great degree a mystery. It is readily 
intelligible that there must be a certain conformity of habit 
between stock and scion, that the two must be well matched as 
regards vigour, health, time of starting into growth, and the 
like, that the tissues of the plant must be sufficiently alike to 
permit of due contact and union, and so on. But these facts 
will not suffice to explain the sympathies and antipathies which 
plants manifest. A pear ( Pyrus ) will graft on another pear, 
on a quince ( Gydonia ), or on a hawthorn ( Crataegus ) ; but there 
is difficulty in getting it to grow on an apple, and a like diffi- 
culty in inducing an apple to grow on a pear, closely as the 
two are related. 
Cultivators are often sadly puzzled to find a suitable stock 
on which to “ work,” as they phrase it, some desirable variety, 
and it is only by repeated trials with various plants that they 
succeed. In such cases they have nothing to guide them but 
the general principle that there must be some near botanical 
affinity, and, as we have just seen, even that fails them occasion- 
ally. For years it was a hard matter to find a stock on which 
Viburnum macrocephalum could be grafted, in spite of there 
being plenty of near relations at hand. On the other hand, the 
Loquat ( Eriobotrya ) will graft on the pear, the Eriostemon on 
the Correa , genera which, under the circumstances, we should 
not call very closely allied, while, in numerous instances, ever- 
green plants will graft on stocks of deciduous plants. A peren- 
nial species of convolvulus grafted on an annual species has 
caused the latter to assume the perennial habit of the scion — 
nay, some French nurserymen have even succeeded in en- 
grafting a bud on a leaf. Not only did union take place, but 
the leaf thus made to serve as a stock instead of speedily perish- 
ing, as it would have done under ordinary circumstances, 
acquired a greater degree of permanence — assumed, in fact, the 
characters of a stem.* 
It is evident, then, that much yet remains to be learnt as to . 
the why and wherefore of these sympathies and antipathies. 
In addition to a certain not remote botanical affinity, and to 
conformity of physiological conditions, it is obvious that nice 
adjustment and accurate contact of the growing tissues must be 
secured and maintained if the graft is to be satisfactory. 
11 On each lopp’d shoot a foster scion hind : 
Pith pressed to pith and rind applied to rind ; 
So shall the trunk with loftier crest ascend, 
Nurse the new hud, admire the leaves unknown, 
And, blushing, bend with fruitage not its own.” 
Gardeners’ Chronicle,” 1866, p. 386. 
