108 
GRAFTING. 
j^CHAP. IV. 
thoroughly incorporated. This is thinly 
spread on cotton cloth, and used in strips 
like cerecloth. In grafting trees with soft 
and delicate bark, fine moss and cotton wool 
tied on with ligatures of bast mat, are better 
than anything else, and they are quite suf¬ 
ficient for every purpose for which grafting 
clay can be required for ladies. A new 
composition has been lately invented, made 
with caoutchouc, which is said to be very 
efficacious, but I have never seen it tried. 
The essential points to he attended to in 
grafting are choosing a stock and a scion 
that correspond in nature and in habits of 
growth; cutting the parts to be united so as 
to fit exactly and leave no vacuity between; 
taking care that the soft wood of the scion 
shall always rest on the soft wood of the 
stock, as it is between these parts that the 
union is to be effected; binding the parts 
closely together, and covering them so as to 
prevent them from becoming so dry as to 
shrink apart, in which case the vessels would 
wither and become incapable of uniting. 
Uses of Grafting and Budding . The ob¬ 
vious use of grafting is to propagate varieties 
