180 Mr. Knight on the Parts of Trees 
wanted to satisfy me, that it is not any defective action of the 
root which occasions the debility and diseases of old varieties 
of the apple and pear tree ; and indeed experience every 
where shows, that a young seedling stock does not give the 
character of youth to the inserted bud or graft. I, however, 
procured plants from cuttings of some very old varieties of 
the apple, which readily emit roots; and these plants at the 
end of two years were grafted, about two inches above the 
ground, with a new and very luxuriant variety of the same 
species. These grafts grew very freely, and the roots them- 
selves, at the end of four or five years, probably contained at 
least ten times as much alburnum, as they would have con- 
tained, had the trees remained ungrafted. The roots were 
also free from every appearance of disease, or defect. 
Some crab-stocks were at the same time grafted with the 
golden pippin, in a soil where the wood of that variety rarely 
lived more than two years ; and I again grafted the annual 
shoots of the golden pippin, with cuttings of a young and 
healthy crab tree, so as to include a portion of the wood of 
the golden pippin, between the roots and branches of the 
native uncultivated species, or crab tree ; and in this situation 
it grew just as well as the wood of the stock and branches. 
Some branches also of the golden pippin trees, which I men- 
tioned in my former communication of 1795, being much 
cankered, were cut oft about a foot above the junction of the 
grafts to the stocks, and were regrafted with a new and 
healthy variety. Parts of the wood of the golden pippin, in 
which were many cankered spots, were thus placed between 
the newly inserted grafts, and the stocks; and these parts 
have subsequently become perfectly free from disease, and 
