“As a curiosity let us mention the mixing of several kinds of fruit on the same stock. By means of grafting the same tree can bear, all at one time, almonds, apricots, peaches, plums, and cherries, because these five kinds admit of reciprocal grafting; another tree may be covered simultaneously with pears, quinces, berries of the mountain ash, medlars, and service-berries. These are very odd instances, certainly, but of no practical interest. It would be a waste of time to dwell longer on them did they not teach a useful lesson. They demonstrate that however many fresh grafts are added to a tree, the new-comers exert no influence outside their own sphere. Whether offshoots of the tree itself or aliens, the grafts develop, blossom, and fructify, each after its own kind, without contracting any of its neighbor’s habits. Among the curious phenomena observed in this artificial juxtaposition of mutually independent grafts, we will mention a pear-tree on which were represented, by means of grafting, all the different varieties of cultivated pears. Sour or sweet, dry or juicy, large or small, green or bright-colored, round or long, hard or mellow, each and all ripened on the same tree and grew again year after year without change, faithful to the specific character, not of the supporting tree, but of the various grafts planted on this common stock. “The mere bringing together of analogous plants does not suffice for the success of the operation of grafting; there must be a considerable extent of contact between those parts of the graft and the stock that have the most vitality and are consequently best fitted to coalesce. This contact should be in the inner layers of the bark and in the seat of plant-growth situated between the wood and the bark. The vital activity of the plant, in fact, resides especially in this region. It is between the wood and the bark that the elaborated sap descends; there is where new cells and new fibers are organized, to form on one side a sheet of bark and on the other a layer of wood. Hence it is there and only there that coalescence is possible between the graft and the stock.” CHAPTER XXXVIII GRAFTING (Continued) “There are three principal kinds of grafting, namely: grafting by approach (also called simply ‘approaching’ or ‘inarching’), grafting by shoots or scions, and grafting by buds (commonly known as ‘budding’). The form given to the two cut ends that are brought together and the disposition of the parts thus placed in contact give rise, in practice, to numerous subdivisions that need not be mentioned here. We will confine ourselves to the essentials.