by covering them with moist but not wet soil or sand in a
cellar or cool shed. In California, the best results are obtained when
the grafting is done in February or March, though it may be begun
earlier and continued a month later.

_Preparation of cuttings._

The stocks are cut into lengths of about ten inches, a gauge being
used to secure uniform length. The cut at the bottom is made through a
bud in such a way as to leave the diaphragm. The top cut is made as
near ten inches from the bottom as possible, leaving about one and
one-half inches above the top bud for convenience in grafting. The
stock is then disbudded, taking both visible and adventitious buds,
the latter indicated by woody enlargements, to keep down the number of
suckers.

[Illustration: FIG. 12. Bench-grafted cuttings of grape, showing both
the cleft-graft and the whip-graft.]

The cion should be made with but one bud, thereby gaining the
advantage of having every cion the same length so that all unions are
at the same distance below the surface of the ground in the nursery.
The cion is made with about two and one-half inches of internode below
the bud and one-half inch above, a sharp knife being the best tool for
making the cuts.

Stock and cion cuttings are now graded to exactly the same diameters,
this being necessary to secure perfection in the unions. Three
methods of uniting stock and cion are illustrated in Fig. 12. It
suffices to grade by the eye into three lots--large, small and
medium--but some nurserymen prefer to secure even greater accuracy by
the use of any one of several mechanical gauges. The methods of
uniting stock and cion may be described best by quoting Bioletti, from
whom most of the details already given have been summarized:[5]

_Tongue grafting._

"When the stocks and scions are prepared and graded the grafter takes
a box of stocks and a box of the corresponding size of scions and
unites them. Each is cut at the same angle in such a way that when
placed together the cut surface of one exactly fits and covers the
whole of the cut surface of the other. The length of cut surface
should be from three to four times the diameter of the cutting, the
shorter cut for the larger sizes and the longer for the thinner. This
will correspond to an angle of from 14.5 to 19.5 degrees. The cut
should be made with a sliding movement of the knife. This will make
the cut more easily and more smoothly.

"The cut should be made with a sin