Part 7
Near the entrance of the garden stands a vase, conspicuously mounted on a pedestal, in which grows what the official who did the honours was pleased to point out as a rose-bush grafted on an oak-tree. I shook my head in disgust at the falsehood. “Look,” he insisted, “the stem is an oak-stem, the side branches are covered with oak-leaves, and the central twig is the rose which has been grafted in the middle. You can see that its leaves are rose-leaves, can’t you?--and it is full of buds coming into flower.”
“No, no; it is only a trick,” I answered, without apologising for flatly contradicting him. “You have perforated the stem of the oak from the root to the top; through the tube thus made you have inserted the stem of a rooted rose-bush; but there is no union between the two, like the junction of a scion with the stock. It grows independently in the earth, as the oak-plant does, although encased within it; and you call that grafting a rose on an oak, which I am gardener enough to know to be impossible.”
“Ah! you know that. You have found it out. And yet, many people, when they see this specimen, go away persuaded that we have succeeded in grafting a rose on an oak.”
I made no further remark than my looks expressed; but I thought that botanic gardens were instituted for the teaching of accurate information and useful facts, and not to mislead ignorant persons and to propagate error. An educational establishment, subsidised partly by the government and partly by the town, forgets its duties when it blazons forth a charlatanism which would upset the principles of vegetable physiology and stultify the hard-earned acquirements of science.
On the 18th of July was published, price Five Shillings and Sixpence, neatly bound in cloth,
THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
Containing the Numbers issued between the Nineteenth of January and the Twelfth of July, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-six.
Complete sets of Household Words may always be had.
_The Right of Translating Articles from_ HOUSEHOLD WORDS _is reserved by the Authors_.
Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This is from Volume XIV of the series.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
Transcriber has generated a Table of Contents.
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
This file uses =equal signs= to indicate boldface text.
Itemized changes from the original text:
On page 1, changed “for” to “for.”, near “morsel of luck to be thankful” On page 1, changed “bed-side” to “bedside”, near “the chair by her” On page 4, changed “sweet-heart” to “sweetheart”, near “with a farthing. My” On page 8, changed “be” to “he”, near “wrings from poor people” On page 20, changed “bird” to “Bird”, near “or The Bird of St. Martin” On page 29, changed “melody!"” to “melody!”, near “and an echo of” On page 29, changed “again!"” to “again!”, near “reap but tears and griefs” On page 42, changed “third class” to “third-class”, near “chars-à-bancs are open at the side”