GRAFTING 
69 
the species used as a stock, and many of the varieties which 
are grafted upon it. There does not appear to be a record 
of the first employment of the grafting method for this 
section of Rhododendrons ; it was probably turned to 
account in the propagation of the earliest hybrids raised 
in this country between the Indian R. arbor eum and the 
other hardier species which had previously held the field as 
garden shrubs. The excitement caused by these hybrids 
raised at Highclere, Hants, and flowered for the first time 
over eighty years ago, may have led nurserymen, in their 
efforts to quickly work up stock of them, to resort to 
grafting. 
Before 1850 grafting had become general, discussions 
having taken place about that time with respect to its 
advantages and disadvantages. Thus we read in the 
Gardeners* Chronicle for 1850 that, although grafting was 
then the means most generally preferred for the increase 
of new varieties of Rhododendrons, attempts had already 
been made to prove that the grafted plants were, as a rule, 
short-lived and unhealthy, and that whilst grafting increased 
their tendency to flower, it was at the expense of their 
general vigour. A German writer about the same time 
insisted that plants from cuttings ought to supersede those 
from grafts, because the latter, although they grew well for 
a time, ultimately went wrong through an imperfect union, 
or some inequality between stock and scion. Then, as 
now, there was something to be said for this view. It 
would not be difficult to prove that R. ponticum is not 
a suitable stock for some of the varieties that are grafted 
upon it. It is certainly unsuitable for the more tender 
Himalayan species, seedlings of R. arhoreum or R. cant- 
panulatum being far better. Nurserymen ought, then, to 
