Page:Treatise on Cultivation of the Potato.djvu/12

 all their diseases, and seemed (like invalids) to enjoy the benefit of a better climate. I had before frequently observed, that all the old fruits suffered less in warm situations, where the soil was not unfavourable. I tried the effects of laying one kind, but the canker destroyed it at the ground. Indeed I had no hope of success from this method; as I had observed that several sorts, which had always been propagated from cuttings, were as much diseased as any others. The wood of the old fruits has long appeared to me to possess less elasticity and hardness, and to feel more soft and spongy under the knife, than that of the new varieties which I have obtained from seed. This defect may, I think, be the immediate cause of the canker and moss, though it is probably itself the effect of old age, and therefore incurable.

Being at length convinced that all efforts to make grafts from worn-out trees were ineffectual, I thought it probable that those taken from very young trees raised from seed could not be made to bear fruit. The event here answered my expectation. Cuttings from seedling apple-trees of two years old were inserted on stock of twenty, and in a bearing state. These have now been grafted nine years; and though they have been frequently transplanted to check their growth, they have not yet produced a single blossom. I have since grafted some very old trees with cuttings from seedling apple-trees of five years old: their growth has been extremely rapid, and there appears no probability that their time of producing fruit will be accelerated, or that their health will be injured, by the great age of the stocks. A seedling apple-tree usually bears fruit in thirteen or fourteen years; and I therefore conclude, that I have to wait for a blossom till the trees from which the grafts were taken attain that age; though I have reason to believe, from the form of their buds, that they will all be extremely productive. Every cutting, therefore, taken from the apple (and probably from every other") tree, will be affected by the state of the parent stock. If that be too young to produce fruit, it will grow with vigour, but will not blossom; and if it be too old, it will immediately produce fruit, but will never make a healthy tree, and consequently never answer the intention of the planter. The root, however, and the part of the stock adjoining it, are greatly more durable than the bearing branches; and I have no doubt but that scions obtained from either would grow