No mention of it occurs in the Pentateuch, though Moses there gives directions how to manage an orchard. For the first three years the blossoms were not to be suffered to ripen into fruit, and even in the fourth all that came was sacred to the Lord. From the fifth year, onward, they might do with it what they pleased. Of these regulations the intention was to prevent the early exhaustion of the trees. Homer, also, is silent on the practice of grafting, nor does any mention of it occur in the extant works of Hesiod, though Manilius[1364] refers to his poems in proof of the antiquity of the practice. By degrees, however, it got into use;[1365] and, in the age of Aristotle,[1366] was already common, as at present almost everywhere, save in Greece,[1367] since no fruit was esteemed excellent unless the tree had been grafted. Some few of the rules they observed in this process may be briefly noticed.[1368] Trees with a thick rind were grafted in the ordinary way, and sometimes by inserting the graft between the bark and the wood, which was called infoliation.[1369] Inoculation, also, or introducing the bud of one tree into the rind of another, was common among Greek gardeners.[1370] They were extremely particular in their choice of stocks.[1371] Thus the fig was grafted only on the platane[1372] and the mulberry; the mulberry on the chestnut,[1373] the beech, the apple, the terebinth, the wild pear, the elm, and the white poplar, (whence white mulberries;) the pear on the pomegranate, the quince, the mulberry, (whence red pears,) the almond, and the terebinth; apples[1374] on all sorts of wild pears and quinces, (whence the finest apples called by the Athenians Melimela,)[1375] on damascenes, also, and _vice versâ_, and on the platane, (whence red apples.)[1376] Another method of communicating a blush to this fruit was to plant rose-bushes round the root of the tree.[1377] The walnut was grafted on the strawberry-tree only;[1378] the pomegranate on the myrtle[1379] and the willow; the laurel on the cherry[1380] and the ash; the white peach on the damascene and the almond; the damascene on the wild pear, the quince, and the apple; chestnuts on the walnut, the beech, and the oak;[1381] the cherry on the terebinth, and the peach; the quince on the oxyacanthus; the myrtle on the willow; and the apricot on the damascene, and the Thasian almond-tree. The vine, also, was grafted on a cherry and a myrtle-stock, which produced, in the first case, grapes in spring,[1382] in the second, a mixed fruit, between the myrtle-berry and the grape.[1383] When the gardener desired to obtain black citrons, he inserted a citron-graft into an apple-stock, and, if red, into a mulberry-stock. ----- Footnote 1364: Astronomicon, ii. p. 30. l. 4. Scalig. et not. p. 67. Footnote 1365: Cf. Athen. xiv. 68. Footnote 1366: De Plantis, ii. 6. Footnote 1367: Hobhouse, Travels, i. 227. Thiersch, Etat Actuel de la Grèce, t. i. p. 297. Footnote 1368: