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Tongue-Grafting

Tongue-grafting is not very different to whip-grafting, and is performed as follows. The stock being ready, cut it off at three or four inches from the ground, and, with a very sharp, straight, and narrow-bladed knife, cut a thin slip of wood and bark upwards from about two inches below the top of the shortened stock. Make this cut at one pull of the knife, inserting the edge rather horizontally, and when it has gone through the bark and into the wood a little short of the middle, pull straight upwards. Then at less than half-way down this cut a thin tongue, not more than three-eights of an inch long. Proceed in the same way with the thick part of the scion, making a sloping cut of about the same length as the cut of the stock, and make a tongue to correspond with that in the stock. Bring the four edges of the bark, that is, the two edges of the cut in the top of the stock and the two corresponding edges of the cut in the bottom of the scion, to meet precisely, which can never be the case unless the first cut in the stock and that in the scion is even as a die, and performed with a knife as sharp as a razor. The two parts thus formed, the tongues and the stock clasping one another must be bound up as before.