The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 426: CHAP. 23.—INOCULATION OR BUDDING.

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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 23.—INOCULATION OR BUDDING.

In this, too, the art of inoculating 3007 took its rise. By the aid of an instrument similar to a shoe-maker’s paring-knife an eye is opened in a tree by paring away the bark, and another bud is then enclosed in it, that has been previously removed with the same instrument from another tree. This was the ancient mode of inoculation with the fig and the apple. That again, described by Virgil,3008 requires a slight fissure to be made in the knot of a bud which has burst through the bark, and in this is enclosed a bud taken from another tree. Thus far has Nature been our instructor in these matters.