The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 · the Elder Pliny
CHAP. 22. (14.)—GRAFTING: THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF IT.
Nature has also taught us the art of grafting by means of seed. We see a seed swallowed whole by a famished bird; when softened by the natural heat of the crop, it is voided, with the fecundating juices of the dung, upon some soft couch formed by a tree; or else, as is often the case, is carried by the winds to some cleft in the bark of a tree. Hence[3006] it is that we see the cherry growing upon the willow, the plane upon the laurel, the laurel upon the cherry, and fruits of various tints and hues all springing from the same tree at once. It is said, too, that the jack-daw, from its concealment of the seeds of plants in holes which serve as its store-houses, gives rise to a similar result. In this, too, the art of inoculating[3007] took its rise. By the aid of an instrument similar to a shoe-maker’s paring-knife an eye is opened in a tree by paring away the bark, and another bud is then enclosed in it, that has been previously removed with the same instrument from another tree. This was the ancient mode of inoculation with the fig and the apple. That again, described by Virgil,[3008] requires a slight fissure to be made in the knot of a bud which has burst through the bark, and in this is enclosed a bud taken from another tree. Thus far has Nature been our instructor in these matters.
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