bark and wood on the side of the stock is cut sloping, and the scion being adjusted as carefully as possible, it is bound on and covered with clay. 2d. The scion being cut sloping as in whip grafting, a cross cut is made in the side of the tree on the top of a perpendicular slit; the bark of the tree above the cross cut is pared down slanting to the wood. The bark is now raised as in inoculating, and the scion inserted, and bound fast, and covered with clay.

GRAFTING BY APPROACH. This is often practised on trees and shrubs which succeed with difficulty by other modes. The tree to be grafted must be growing very near the tree which is to furnish the grafts. —The limb or limbs of each tree which is to be thus united, must be pared with a long sloping cut of several inches, nearly to its centre; and the parts of each tree thus prepared, are to be brought together, and firmly secured by a bandage of matting, so that the bark shall exactly meet on at least one side, and covered with clay or composition. When a complete union has taken place, the trees are separated with a knife, by cuting off the stock below the junction. [See herbaceous grafting.]

Grafting clay is made of one third part of fresh horse manure free from litter, one third of cow manure, and one third of good clay, with a small mixture of hair, well beaten and incorporated several days before using.

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Grafting composition is made of three parts of resin, three parts of bees' wax, and one part of tallow, melted together; when well mixed, it is poured into water and workup like shoemaker's wax by hand. This composition may be spread while in a melted state pretty thickly with a brush on very strong brown paper. This paper is to be cut into small stripes of suitable size, and is very quickly applied. In cool weather, it may be instantly warmed with the breath, so as to become adhesive.

SECTION X.-OF FRUITFULNESS.

Artificial means by which fruitfulness is induced. Whatever operates in repressing the too vigorous growth of the tree, by obstructing the free circulation of its sap or juices and by causing it to accumulate, and become concentrated has a tendency to render the tree fruitful.

While a tree is yet young and flexible, and exercised by

every moving breath of wind, its pores continue open, and the sap is rapidly and uninterruptedly diffused; its whole juices are expended in the formation of leaf buds. A highly manured soil, a warm temperature and humid atmosphere, are alike unfavorable to the production of flower buds, by promoting excessive vigor in the tree. But as they grow older, their consistence becomes changed and more inflexible; their bark also becomes more thick and rigid, and may therefore operate by compression; and the sap which before passed on uninterruptedly, is now retarded in its progress; it accumulates and developes fruit buds, and the tree falls into bearing. To effect this object by artificial means, various modes have been adopted. 1st. By ligatures, or ringing, or girdling; variously termed decortication or circumcision. 2d. By bending their branches or by continually shortening the extremities of the young and growing wood. 3d. By subjecting them to a warm and dry atmosphere. Or lastly, by a combination of each and every mode, as in the case of Chinese dwarf trees and the Quenouilles of the French.

SUBS. 1st. GIRDLING OR DECORTICATION. Girdling, decortication, ringing or circumcision, as it is sometimes variously called, consists in making two circular incisions, quite round the limb, through the bark, at the distance of about three eighths of an inch asunder, more or less, according to the size and thriftiness of the tree; then making a perpendicular slit, the ring of the bark is wholly removed to the wood.

Ringing or Decortication is applicable to every kind of fruit tree, and to the vine. Its operation is two fold. 1st, In the early production and abundance of blossom buds which it induces; or, 2d, In increasing the size of the fruit and hastening its maturity, according to the season in which the operation is performed.

When the design of Decortication is the production of blossom buds, the operation must be performed about the last of June, or beginning of July. But when the object to be attained is the enlargement of the fruit and its more early maturity, the operation must be deferred till just at the time when the tree has come into full leaf in the spring.

Mr Knight, from an experience of fifty years in the practice, observes, that when the space from which the bark is

taken off, is too considerable, a morbid state of early maturity is induced, and the fruit becomes worthless. The same injurious effects he has always witnessed, whenever the operation has been performed upon very young or very small branches, for such become debilitated and sickly long before the fruit can arrive at maturity. A tight ligature, applied in the preceding summer in such cases, he has found to answer all the purposes of ringing, with far less injurious consequences to the tree.

Girdling, according to Mr Knight, by causing the current of the sap, while descending from the leaves through the bark, to become arrested in its progress, it accumulates above the decorticated place, whence it is repulsed and again carried upwards, to be expended in an increased production of blossom buds and of fruit. While the part below, being but ill supplied with nutriment, ceases almost to grow, and in consequence it operates feebly in impelling the ascending current of sap, through the decorticated space. And the parts above, being in consequence, less abundantly supplied with moisture, the early maturity is thus powerfully accelerated, as is always the case drought, from whatever cause produced.

Mr Knight, from his long experience, is not friendly to the practice of ringing or girdling in any mode, except only in those few cases, where blossoms cannot otherwise be obtained, or where a single crop of very early fruit exceeds the value of the tree.

Decortication may be practised alternately, on portions of the same tree in alternate years.

SUBS. 2d.

DEBARKING. Debarking, according to Mr Neill, is a practice, first brought into notice by Sir John Sinclair in 1815, in a pamphlet. It consists in paring off, in winter, all the outer bark of the stem and principal branches, down to the liber, or inner concentric bark. The effect is, that such plants grow more vigorously, and the quantity and quality of the fruit are greatly augmented.

Mr Loudon has recorded (Mag. vol. vii. p. 662) that this operation has been declared by one of the best practical men in the Netherlands, a never failing method of greatly improving the quality and size of the fruit on apple and pear trees, and vines. At the winter pruning, which is given there in February, he cuts off with his common

hooked pruning knife, all the outer bark down to the liber, of every tree above eight or ten years old; not so deeply, however, with the young, as with the old trees. It is asserted by those who have witnessed, that this man's practice has never failed of being successful. And another who has tried it in that country asserts, that since he had practised it, he has always had larger and better flavored fruit. This practice, says Mr Loudon, "is not uncommon in England with apple and pear trees, and very general with regard to vines under glass."

SUBS. 3d. BENDING THE LIMBS. This appears to be the most simple, easy, and effectual mode of rendering trees productive. When judiciously performed, its effects are very extraordinary.

The effects appear to be perfectly understood by the Chinese in training their dwarfs. Its effects are also exemplified in the mode of training trees en quenouille, which come into bearing earlier, and bear more abundantly.

Dwarfing is effected by inoculating fruit trees on stocks of comparatively slow growth; the circulation is in consequence retarded, and the effect thus produced is somewhat like that produced, by girdling. The apple is dwarfed by being inoculated on the Paradise or Doucin stock ; the peach on a slow growing plum stock; and the pear by being inoculated on the quince stock. A new mode of dwarfing I shall presently explain. Also on the vine, by which means prodigious crops are produced. [See the article on the cultivation of the vine.] Also in the fig, for by this mode Mr Knight has obtained eight crops in a year. [See the article on figs.] The system is equally applicable to every species of fruit trees. It consists in bending every limb, or twig, to a position below the horizontal, while it is yet in a vigorously growing state, generally the last of June; with some kinds which have a prolonged vegetation, it may perhaps with more advantage be deferred till July, as in the case of the peach. The effect produced in the first instance is a momentary suspension of the growth; the juices are concentrated and form fruit buds, for the production of fruit in the following year.

According to Mr Neill, training the bearing shoots of Pear trees downwards, generally causes them to produce.

fruit the second year, which would seldom otherwise produce fruit under six or seven years. And Mr Knight recommends to bend the young, luxuriant shoots of the Peach, instead of shortening [as recommended in the article below,] they thus produce the finest possible bearing wood for the next year.

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SUBS. 4th. PARTICULAR MODES OF PRUNING. Mr Dalbret, Superintendent of the compartments in the Royal Gardens devoted to the culture of fruit trees and economical plants, (near Paris,) has delivered a course of lectures on Pruning in the school of Practical Horticulture. He has practised on his theory for a number of years, and is therefore enabled to appreciate its value. Among the operations which are very rarely practised, and which are scarcely known at a distance from the capital, he has insisted, with propriety, upon the eradication of all useless buds, which occasion more vigor in the branches destined to produce good wood and fruit; and upon the necessity of not leaving too many lateral shoots or twigs, which exhaust the tree; but few should be preserved for yielding fruit each year, and the others should be cut off within a half an inch of the branch, which will cause fruit spurs to appear. He has also demonstrated the utility of pinching or cutting off the ends of the shoots, particularly of stonefruit trees, to check the excessive vigor of the main branches, and to cause the branches which usually consume the sap, to yield fruit; the operation consists in cutting off the yet herbaceous, or young and tender shoots, when they have attained the length of six or eight inches, at a half an inch, or at most an inch above the old wood; if it is done later, the operation will be injurious, instead of insuring fruit for the third year." [New England Farmer, Vol. 8. This article is from the researches of the Hon. H. A. S. Dearborn, and from the Annales d'Horticulture.] For some further particulars, see Currant, Also see Peach.

SUBS. 5th. DWARFING. Grafting and its effects. The effects of grafting in rendering trees suddenly productive is well known. This effect is produced on the principles before explained.

Dwarfs are extensively used in France for almost every