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 horticulture and gardening, this operation is called incision, to distinguish it from inoculation or budding, which they call inferere oculos.

Grafting has been practised from the most remote antiquity; 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.