226 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January iq, I860. 
late Duke of Devonshire was especially fond of it, and we believe 
that it invariably appeared on table at his large parties. To 
Chatsworth, therefore, we have applied for such information as 
is needed by our correspondent, and the following is the reply we 
have received: — 
“ We cut down the stem of the plant close to the ground after 
it has fruited. The bunch of fruit is cut off as soon as it begins 
to change colour, and is hung up in a warm, dry part of the 
house to ripen. We do not give the plants much water when 
not growing, but great quantities whilst they are. We do not 
give them manure water, but no cover the soil in which 
they are growing with decayed manure every spring. The 
suckers which spring up after the old fruiting stems have been 
cut away do not bear fruit the first year, but they do the second 
year. The border in which they are grown is not heated ; nor is 
any bottom heat given. They are planted in the border, and 
not either in pots or tubs. The temperature of the house in 
winter is kept by fire heat at from 55° to 60°. The blossom is 
not fertilised by the aid of a camel’s-hair brush. The air of the 
house is kept dry in winter, but at no other time.”] 
THE SCIENCE OF GARDENING. 
(Continued from page 106.) 
The circumstances and phenomena attendant upon successful 
grafting are as follows. It is absolutely needful that the liber, or 
inner bark, and the alburnum, or sap wood, of the scion come in 
contact respectively with the liber and alburnum of the stock. It 
matters not whether the surfaces of the inner wood of the scion 
and the inner wood of the stock come in contact or not, for they 
never unite ; and were it not that its wood enables the scion to 
retain its position firmly, that wood might be absent without any 
hindrance to the success of the grafting. 
Grafting is nothing more than the healing of a wound in a 
tree; the lips of the wound, instead of re-uniting to each other, 
uniting to the lips of a wound made on part of another tree. It 
is a process that has been successfully practised in creatures of 
a higher order. The head of a Polypus has been made to unite 
to the decapitated body of another Polypus ; the spur of a cock 
has been grafted upon the comb of another cock; and flaps of 
skin have been taken from the human body and made to unite 
with the skin of the face in establishing an artificial nose. 
In all these operations similar phenomena occur—a granular 
adhesive secretion arises from the wound of the body grafted 
upon, and through this the circulatory vessels establish a union. 
In the case of the graft of a tree, as shown in the annexed 
sketches, the alburnums and barks of the scions and stocks have 
united; but the inner woods are entirely separate. The first 
figure represents a Pear scion on a Pear stock the first year 
after grafting, split longitudinally down their centres. If the 
barks and alburnums had not united there would have been a line 
of separation at «, as markedly as is seen between the two woods. 
This drawing was made during December, 1859, from the section 
of a grafting effected in the spring of 1858. Even in that brief 
period the stock had formed alburnum so as to fill up entirely 
various small spaces about the lower part of the scion. 
In Fig. 2, a longitudinal section is shown of an Almond tree 
(/), cleft-grafted on a Plum tree (g ), showing that the wood 
remains perfectly unchanged on each side of the line of junction 
(e e). This is a marvellous demonstration of the assimilating 
/ 
o 
and secreting powers of the vessels of the inner hark. This bark 
of the Plum stock received the descending sap altered as it had 
been by the leaves of the Almond; above the line of junction is 
deposited Almond -wood, but beneath that line, at a distance too 
minute to be appreciated, Plum wood is deposited ! 
We have said that the woods of the scion and graft never unite. 
If the graft and the stock are both small, of recent growth, their 
surfaces fit closely, and they have not been allowed to become at 
all dry, such union may take place, for the wood of the scion is 
in such case almost all alburnum ; but under other circumstances 
the union of the inner woods does not occur. New wood in each 
succeeding year is deposited over the lines of separation, and 
growth goes on until scion and stock are of the same dimensions ; 
but if at any period of their growth they are cut through trans¬ 
versely, the original spaces between the scion and stock will be 
found remaining. 
In order to ascertain whether the new layer of wood is formed 
from the former layer of wood, or of bark, M. Du Hamel made a 
graft par Vecusson ( Fhys . des Arb. liv. iv., chap. 4) ; which is 
done by means of detaching a portion of bark from the trunk of 
a tree, and supplying its place exactly hv means of a portion of 
bark detached from the trunk of another tree that shall contain 
a bud. * In this way he grafted the Peach on a Plum tree, be¬ 
cause the appearance of the wood which they respectively form 
is so very different, that it could easily be ascertained whether 
the new layer was produced from the stock or from the graft. 
Accordingly, at the end of four or five months after the time of 
grafting, the tree was cut down; and as the season of the flowing 
of the sap was past, a portion of the trunk, including the graft, 
was now boiled to make it part more easily with its bark ; in the 
stripping off of which there was found to be formed under the 
graft a thin plate of the wood of the Peach, united to the Plum 
by its sides, hut not by its inner surface, although it had been 
applied to the stock as closely as possible. Hence Du Hamel 
concluded that the new layer of wood is formed from the bark, 
and not from the wood of the preceding year. The same ex¬ 
periment w T as repeated with the same result upon the Willow 
and Poplar; when it was also found that if a portion of wood is 
left on the graft it dies, and the new wood formed by the bark is 
exterior to it. —J. (To be continued.) 
ORCHARD-HOUSES. 
Allow me to congratulate our readers on account of that most 
practical and interesting article on his own system of orchard- 
house management by Mr. Rivers; with every word of which I 
fully and very freely agree, except the part which seems to revive 
the old doctrine of the annual decay of spongioles—a doctrine 
that was in vogue some thirty years back, but could not bear the 
tickling of scientific fingers under the surface, and it went like 
smoke. And indeed the doctrine of the very formation, use, and 
application of spongioles themselves has been wrongly treated by 
the cultivators of botanical science among us for the last thirty 
years, and woefully understood by the great hulk of our gardeners. 
Dr. Bindley, who was at the head and front of the fallacy about 
spongioles all that time, has, however, recently recanted, and 
candidly admitted the errors as publicly as he and they taught 
them on the subject. 
But that was not the subject I wished to notice so much as 
that which I fear I am myself responsible for—about Sir 
Joseph Paxton’s “ Houses for the Million.” The mere glimpses 
