GRAFTING, or ENGRAFTING, in Gardening, is the taking a shoot from one tree, and inserting it into another, in such a manner that both may unite closely and become one tree. By the ancient writers on husbandry and gardening, this operation is called in-cision, to distinguish it from inoculation or budding, which they call inſerere oculos.
Grafting has been practised from the most remote antiquity;
Graham. antiquity; but its origin and invention is differently related by naturalists. Theophrastus tells us, that a bird having swallowed a fruit whole, cast it forth into a cleft or cavity of a rotten tree; where mixing with some of the putrid parts of the wood, and being washed with the rains, it budded, and produced within this tree another tree of a different kind. This led the husbandman to certain reflections, from which soon afterwards arose the art of engraving. For the different methods of performing this operation, see GARDENING INDEX.