THE CULTURE OF THE ORANGE TREE. 
55 
nearer tlie glass and require room, the bed will 
have again declined enough to allow of the 
pots being sunk, and in July the glasses them- 
selves may be raised a little. If the pots 
again fill with I'oots, which they may by August, 
remove them into the greenhouse, giving them 
plenty of room on the shelves, and treat them 
as established plants. If they are for stocks, 
you will continue to grow them until they are 
the size you wish them to be for use. If for 
new varieties, the sooner they are inarched on 
other strong stocks, the sooner they will 
bloom and bear ; for this purpose, they must 
be taken to the stocks that they are to be tried 
on, and their pots so adjusted by props or other- 
wise, that they may be level with the portion 
of stock to which they are to be united. A 
clean cut on the side of the stock, clear through 
the bark, must be made on the side next the 
plant, and the portion to be united must be 
cut nearly half through, perfectly flat, so as 
to fit against the stock, where it must be tied 
so that the bark of the stock on one side the 
cut, and the bark of the branch, may come 
in contact, No matter how much of the 
cut on the stock shows, so that the bark of 
the plant engrafted is in contact with the 
bark on one side of the cut, which in a large 
stock is always wider than the cut of the 
branch, and unless it be a large stock, it might 
as well be on its own plant. When this has 
been tied a few weeks, it will have united, and 
that part of the stock which is above the union 
may be cut down, and the plant below the 
union may be secured. The engrafted poi'tion 
now becomes the plant, and the increased 
vigour of a well-established stock will bring 
the flower and fruit two or three years sooner 
than if its own original root had to maintain 
it. But it will naturally occur to the grower, 
that to try many seedlings would be involving 
great expense, occupy great room, and be 
very troublesome. On this account, it is the 
practice only to select such seedlings as indi- 
cate novelty ; probably in hundreds of seed- 
lings, not half a dozen would be thought worth 
the trouble. The habit of the young plant 
may be different to ordinary stocks ; the 
foliage, or some other peculiaritj^, or its likeness 
to some approved sort, may determine the 
raiser to try, but otherwise they are all allowed 
to grow, to be used as stocks for others. Those 
therefore in the habit of raising seedlings, 
have soon a number of stocks for the second 
year to work approved varieties on, and in 
three or four years, with good attention, large 
enough to try seedlings upon. 
PROPAGATING BY GRAFTING. 
Grafting by inarching we have already 
described in the raising of new varieties 
from seed ; it is also applicable to propagating 
approved sorts, and enables us to use a much 
larger branch, or a branch Avitli fruit on it. 
Other modes of grafting are done with detached 
scions, and may be varied much. Grafting 
is simply uniting, in a join perfectly fitting 
every way, a piece of one tree on a portion of 
another tree. The stocks, which are two sea- 
sons old before they are well adapted for the 
operation, are raised from seed or cuttings ; the 
former are the better. The scions are best 
when they are the same size as the stock ; 
this should for dwarf plants be cut down 
within two or three inches of the surface, a 
sloping cut should be made, and the scion 
should be also cut in a slope to fit ; these require 
only to be bound together with bass matting, 
or coarse worsted, and covered with grafting 
wax, or grafting clay, the former made with 
bees-wax and resin, equal parts, and sufficient 
tallow to make it melt at a temperature that 
will allow of its application in a melted state, 
without scalding the wood, and to harden in 
the ordinary atmosphere, even in summer ; 
the other is made with well -beaten clay, mixed 
with neat's dung, fresh, which, when well 
kneaded together, makes a pliable composition 
coat, which will not crack when dry. This 
covering is to keep off the external air. The 
operation is performed in the spring, before 
they begin growing, and it is very soon dis- 
covered whether the grafts have taken or not. 
Two-year-old wood is the best to use for 
scions, and the place of contact with the stock 
may be any age. Standard plants are usually 
grafted at the height the stems are to be, 
after the manner of the rose. It is a common 
practice abroad to put on two grafts, one on 
each side a strong stock ; our opinion, grounded 
on experience, is against more than one ; their 
plan leaves a flat top, on which the wet lodges, 
and often rots the centre, whereas by sloping 
the stock, and only inserting one graft, you 
have a much more sightly union, and the stock 
continues as sound as possible. The stocks for 
standards must not only be a given age, say 
i\ve years or more, but the lateral branches 
must have been removed all up the stem the 
whole time, and only the top few branches 
