The French have also a mode of grafting, which they call par incrustation, and which is performed in the spring, as soon as the leaf-buds appear. A cion with a bud adhering to the wood is cut in a sort of oval shape, and inserted in a cavity made of the same shape, and just below an eye which has commenced growing. It is then bound around with matting, as in budding. This is a sort of spring budding, with rather more wood attached to the bud, than in summer budding. It is very successfully practiced by various cultivators in the vicinity of Paris. There is still another mode sometimes practiced in France, which owes its origin to a cultivator named Lecoq. A small branch is chosen, which is provided with two buds, one of them being on the upper part, and the other near its larger end. A sidelong sloping cut is made all along its lower half, the upper being left entire. When the cion is thus prepared, its cut side is fitted to the side of the stock under the bark, which has been cut and peeled back. It is then bound around with mat-strings or grafting cloth in the usual way. This mode has a peculiar merit; should the upper bud not grow, the lower one rarely fails, and develops itself as in common budding.
Cleft and whip-grafting is also practiced occasionally upon the roots of the Rose, and succeeds very well with some varieties. These modes of grafting can all be more successfully practiced on stocks in pots in green-houses with bottom heat and bell glasses. We have given thus concisely, and, we hope, clearly, the various modes of budding and grafting with which we are acquainted. They may be sufficient to enable the amateur to amuse his leisure hours, though his success may not entirely meet his expectations. Simple as these operations are, they require a kind of skill, and, if we may so call it, sleight-of-hand, which is only attained by constant practice upon a great number of plants.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
MULTIPLICATION BY SEED AND HYBRIDIZING.
We have described, in former pages, the various modes of cultivating the Rose, and of propagating the many beautiful varieties which exist, and would now briefly advert to a mode of developing still farther the beauty which lies hid within the horny covering that protects the dormant germ of vitality—in other words, of obtaining new varieties by seed. With the making of the seed-bed commenced a new era in the culture of the Rose, and advancing with rapid strides, it made more progress in forty years than in centuries before. The Dutch seem to have been the first to raise roses from seed, by the same mode which they applied successfully to their tulips, hyacinths, etc., and from the time that this mode became generally employed, the varieties of roses began to increase. In this species of cultivation the French soon outstripped their Dutch neighbors, and gained the reputation which they still retain, of preëminent skill in the production of new varieties of roses from the seed.
From 1805 to 1810, the Empress Josephine, whose love for flowers is well known, collected at her favorite residence, Malmaison, the choicest varieties of the Rose that could be obtained from Holland, Germany, and Belgium, and thus gave an increased impulse to the culture of roses in the vicinity of Paris.