Budding Trees In The Nursery
Illustration★★If you should go over one of our large nurseries in the month of August, and look down through the long even rows of young trees, you would see in front of every row perhaps one man, perhaps several, sitting on -he ground doing something to the trees. If you should go close up to one of them, you would see that he takes in his fingers a. tiny bud, not so big as the end of your finger, makes a little slit with a sharp knife in the bark of the young tree, and slips in the bud.
If it lives and grows, the tree will bear just such fruit as that one from which the bud was taken. But why does he not let the young trees alone?
Some are apple-trees, some pears, some peaches. Why does he not let them grow up to bear just such fruit as they naturally would? Because, in most cases, the natural fruit would be worthless. The owner and master of the nursery wants his trees to bear the very best fruit; so he puts in buds of the very best kind, and the tree is changed, and bears different fruit from its own natural product.
If you go into a Sundayschool, you will see exactly the same process going on. Anon,
The point
Just as a nursery worker grafts a bud from a good tree into a young tree to improve its fruit, so good influence grafted into a young life changes what it produces.