Cherries are now grown almost wholly as budded trees but they can be more or less readily root-grafted, depending upon the variety. Under some circumstances it might be profitable to propagate them by grafting. Usually it is necessary to use a whole root and to graft at the crown of the stock. Budd recommends this practice for Iowa, using Mazzard stock but with the expectation that the cion will take root and eventually the tree will stand on its own roots.[53] We cannot believe, however, that grafting can ever take the place of budding as a nursery practice or that it can be profitably used except in very exceptional cases. Buds in propagating are usually taken from nursery stock, a practice of decades, and there is no wearing out of varieties. Old varieties have lost none of the characters accredited to them a century, or several centuries, ago by pomological writers. Nor does it seem to matter, in respect to trueness to type, whether the buds be taken from a vigorous, young stripling, a mature tree in the heyday of life or some struggling, lichen-covered ancient--all alike reproduce the variety. The hypothesis that fruit-trees degenerate or, on the other hand, that they may be improved by bud-selection, finds no substantiation in this fruit. There seems to be no limit to the number of times its varieties can be propagated true to type from buds. [40] Varro (B. C. 117-27), as we have seen on page 47, tells when to graft cherries and discusses the process as if grafting cherries were a common operation. [41] In _The Country-Man's New Art of Planting and Grafting_, written by Leonard Mascall, 1652, the writer says, "Sower Cherries ... will grow of stones, but better it shall be to take of the small Cions which do come from the roots; then plant them. "Ye must have respect unto the Healme Cherry, [a sweet cherry of the time] which is graft on the wild Gomire [Mazzard] which is another kind of great Cherry, and whether you do prune them or not, it is not materiall; for they dure a long time." R. A. Austen, in his _Treatise of Fruit Trees_, 1653, writes, "Concerning Stocks fit for Cherry-trees, I account the black Cherry stock (Mazzard) the best to graft any kind of Cherry upon. Yet some say the red Cherry stock is best for May-Cherries. But the black Cherry stocks are goodly straight Plants full of sap and become greater trees than the red Cherry trees." John Reid, _The Scots Gard'ner_, 1683, writes, "Dwarfe Cherries on the Morella, or on the common Red Cherrie. Or on that Red geen which is more Dwarffish than the black." John Lawrence, _The Clergyman's Recreation_, 1714, declared that, "Black Cherries (Mazzard) are the only Stocks, whereon to raise all, the several sorts of Cherries."