iameter?

DR. MORRIS: Not necessarily, but preferably so. One's sense of nicety
might demand that they be just alike, but you will find it doesn't make
any difference. It takes a little longer to put in a big scion of his
sort but it is very sure to grow. Your tree is already made by the time
you have done this.

MR. SMEDLEY: Should you have bark contact all around?

DR. MORRIS: I could do it with contact on one side.

MR. CORSAN: What time of the year do you do it?

DR. MORRIS: Almost any time of the year, preferably May or June.

MR. CORSAN: Do you wax that before you put the raffia on?

DR. MORRIS: After everything is all complete that is my final touch.

MR. WEBER: When the stock is sappy wouldn't the sap jam the edges of the
plane and roughen the bark?

DR. MORRIS: Not if you make it shave. I get the edge of my plane so it
will shave. Then it will not roughen it. I can screw in a scion two feet
long. I have tried it and had it start into growth. Thus I have got half
my tree under way. Now I cover the whole thing with melted paraffin.

MR. CORSAN; How do you apply the paraffin, paint it on?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, with a soft brush.

MR. CORSAN: Do you use the stuff you buy at Woolworth's by the pound?

DR. MORRIS: Yes, I buy what they call parawax.

QUESTION: It is not necessary to wrap a scion with raffia if it is
fastened with screws?

DR. MORRIS: No. After it is screwed you don't have to use raffia. I use
either screws or raffia. In a large one like this the screw is
preferable. In a smaller one the raffia would suffice. It is the plain
splice graft that I use almost to the exclusion of anything else.

MR. WEBER: Wouldn't it assist the union, if the graft didn't make a
perfect fit, to wrap it with raffia to hold it together?

DR. MORRIS: Possibly, but I think with the plane one can make a perfect
fit. That is the idea at any rate. After three weeks of growth that will
stand any storm.

QUESTION: How do you tell when the paraffin is the right temperature?

DR. MORRIS: That is very much as a woman does in cooking. You put in so
much of everything. It is a matter of experience. I get it very hot but
not hot enough to scald. The idea is to have it hot enough and to have
it very thin. On one occasion my light went out when I was grafting
walnut trees. It went out when I was grafting the very last tree. I put
in perhaps twenty or thirty grafts in all. All the other grafts caught
but on that tree, after