362 ON THE EXPEDIENCY AND EFFECTS OF GRAFTING. 
they are naturally barren. If a cultivator intend to raise a fruit-tree 
from seed, he must wait with patience until the stripling arrives at a 
mature age, before he can expect it to bear fruit. In this case, the 
advantage of grafting a mature part of the head of an old tree upon the 
vigorous stem of a young one, is very obvious; because its period of 
youth is much curtailed, or wholly disappears, as grafts have been 
known to bear fruit in the first year. This, however, but seldom 
happens, nor indeed is it to be wished, as no fruit-tree should be 
allowed to bear before it has acquired a reasonable size of head. 
Besides the advantage of transferring aged and mature wood to 
young stocks, the operation has another effect, which is equally service¬ 
able to the cultivator, and that is, its tendency to check luxuriant 
growth—a circumstance which renders the grafted tree at once more 
dwarfish and more fruitful; and as these circumstances are usually 
consequences of each other, it is an improvement clearly attributable to 
the operation of grafting. 
The practicability of grafting, as well as budding, depends on the 
readiness with which the elements of the scion and stock unite; the 
living members of both being placed in close contact at the season when 
both have begun, or are about to begin, to swell under the flowing sap, 
instantly coalesce. If the scion and stock be nearly of a size, the junc¬ 
tion becomes so complete, that in a few years it is scarcely discernible, 
more especially if both are equal in habit of growth or membranous 
structure ; but if one be of a grosser habit and ranker growth than the 
other, they increase in diameter unequally. If an apple scion be grafted 
on a white-thorn, or a pear on a quince stock, the grafts in both cases 
are engrossed much faster than the dwarfer-growing stocks : of course 
the junction is always apparent, and sometimes extremely unequal; 
for though there is a free intercommunication of the sap, the specific 
difference of the woody structure or vascular fabric being unlike, causes 
the difference in the diametric bulk. 
On examination of the grafted part of a stem of several years’ 
growth, by cleaving it perpendicularly, or cutting through the graft 
transversely, we see that there is an intimate union between the layers 
of wood which were about to be formed when the operation was per¬ 
formed, and of all the subsequently formed layers of both; but between 
the wood of the graft and stock which was formed before the perform¬ 
ance, though closely and soundly adhering to each other, there is a 
visible division, marked by a brown line, where the two surfaces made 
by the knife were joined. The union of these is, however, no more 
than a simple adherence by means of secreted sap acting as a cement, 
but not certainly by any interjunction of the woody fibres. 
