207 
THE GRAFTING OF CAMELLIAS. 
Dear Sir,— In answer to your correspondent Amicus, I beg 
to say. Camellias may be grafted with safety all the year round, 
providing you can command two requisites \ the one, a genial 
warmth (a strong heat not being necessary) of not less than 55° 
Fahrenheit, the other, free juicy stocks in a growing state which 
will throw out sap upon being cut, and in which the bark 
will separate freely from the wood; having these requisites you 
may do anything with Camellias in the way of graftingorbudding, 
without them, all the art in the world will not produce success 0 
Having laid down these general rules, I will proceed to describe 
the method I use, in which I by no means recommend a servile 
following to ensure success, but let any one follow that plan 
which his own experience and knowledge in vegetable physio¬ 
logy deems most convenient, keeping the above principles in 
view. 
For winter and early spring grafting I select for scions healthy 
second or autumn shoots of the preceding year’s growth, which 
will be just ripe. My stocks having been shifted in September, 
and excited by three or four weeks’ mild forcing, immediately 
previous to grafting, will be just rooting so as to show their 
noses to the edge of the pot (if I may be allowed the plainest 
expression I can use). If I find they do not all run (a profes¬ 
sional phrase for the bark rising clear from the alburnum), i 
select the most likely first, and make an incision in each before 
using them, as if for the insertion of a bud, on any part of the 
stem above, where I intend to graft them, merely to try if the 
bark will rise, if it will not, I put them back for a few days un¬ 
til the bark will separate easily. Those which are ready I cut 
down to a leaf or shoot on a clean part of the stem. I then 
cut through the back down in a vertical diiection, and insert 
the graft between the bark and the alburnum. I then bind 
them round with a thin strip of bass, or any other weak sub¬ 
stance, which will burst as the graft swells, (I do not hold with 
twine or worsted, which requires cutting away.) I then plunge 
