During the last few years a very general and very intense interest appears to have been awakened in the culture and improvement of grapes. From this interest we may very reasonably expect an extraordinary advance in that department of horticulture; an advance which may place us among the most suecessful vine-growing and wine-producing nations. Now, every encouragement should be rendered while this worthy ambition lasts; and I write to give you and your readers my experience in Grape-grafting, a branch of the subject which, I think, stands in especial want of encouragement and elucidation. Encouragement, because, without grafting, the vast majority of those who desire to have the newer and better kinds of grapes, must wait perhaps many years before the price comes down to the limit of their means; and elucidation, because, as I humbly think, there is no department of horticulture so far beyond the skill of the inexperienced, and so generally unsuccessful even in the hands of the professional horticulturist.

Most farmers, like myself, have more or less wild vines, or otherwise useless ones, in their gardens, who would be very glad to convert them into some better variety as easily and as successfully, as almost every one can, and is constantly doing with worthless apple and pear-trees. Now, if this could be done, how many thousands of our countrymen would have the pleasure of eating the best kinds of grapes, who are destined, in the present state of ignorance on the subject, to eat fox-grapes or none.

That the grape can be grafted, and with very great success, I know to be the case; but such success belongs to a favored few, and I am not of the number, that is, as yet. And the experience that I am going to give you is of the very worst; and I divulge it only with the hope that it may elicit from yourself, or some other experienced and competent operator, a full and clear article on the subject, which will enable any farmer to graft his grapes as successfully as he grafts his apples. Whoever can, or will, do this, will render a service worth thousands to the agricultural community. For nine persons in ten can procure from neighbors and friends cuttings or scions of fine grapes, who are unable to purchase the rooted plants from the professional dealer.

I, who had long and ardently studied surgery, and practiced it (with success I may say, as I '11 not publish my name) on bipeds and quadrupeds, was vain enough to think I could transfer what skill I had from Animal Surgery to Vegetable Surgery, and have an abundance of good fruit where only worthless wild vines grew before. I must tell the whole story of my failure with some minuteness, so that any competent readerof it may be able to give an "opinion as is an opinion," on the cause of it. I took select cuttings in November last (1859) of wood of the last season's growth. They were packed away carefully in moist sand, and placed in a cellar of an even temperature, dry and cool, but never cold enough to freeze water. When the weather became warm in the following spring, I placed the box in the ice-house to retard vegetation and prevent the possibility of the buds bursting. The scions were well kept, as you will perceive further on. I had studied the "Theory and Practice of Medicine," I mean of Grape-Grafting, so fully that I believe there has been nothing written on the subject in the last five years that I did not have at my tongue's end.

And recollecting that most of the writers had imperiously urged the importance - the actual necessity - of waiting till the sap had ceased to flow, I determined to obey that direction, if nothing else, in my "capital operations;" but in "minor surgery" I performed a few trifling operations, and with trifling success. I'll state them first: it was a little "raid" into the domain of root-grafting.

On the 1st March I had prepared a very good hot-bed to start vegetables in; and having a few very thrifty young seedling vines (wild,) I determined to graft Delaware upon six of them, to see how rampantly they would grow when carefully started under glass. They were accordingly cleft-grafted very carefully, tied firmly with waxed linen thread, and then wrapped with cotton cloth saturated in the usual grafting wax. The wild roots sent up shoots so frequent and vigorous, that I had not a little trouble in suppressing them. The grafts were put in the stocks, just above the roots, and they (with two eyes) were about half covered with earth. None ever showed the least sign of vegetating, save one, and that seemed to grow so handsomely and fast, that, thinking it needed space, I cut very carefully the wrapper and strings, when, to my surprise, the cleft opened, and the graft fell out. On examination, there was no sign of callus having formed, or of adhesion having taken place! Now, some persons talk of root-grafting the grape in the winter months, and having them to grow many feet the first season, even when grafted on only six inches of old root (vide "Gardener's Monthly.") Will some one have the kindness to divulge the secret of such success, and give us the " modus operandi?"

2d "case" (as doctors say.) This "operation" was performed on a wild vine, or rather a vine procured some twelve or thirteen years ago from a nursery, perhaps bearing a grand name, and not to be " sneezed at then, but only fit to be " sneezed at," or grafted, since the advent of something better. This was on May 22d last, when the vine had made shoots fifteen or twenty inches long, and bearing one or more full-grown leaves. A writer in the Horticulturist (I think 1848) would not let me operate sooner. It was essential that the sap must have ceased to flow. I waited a long time for that condition, but it never came fully, for some of the vines did bleed then profusely, others did not. Some roots of the fame vine bled profusely, while others did not. (Pray, by-the-by, is there ever a time when the root or vine will not bleed more or less?) To-day (1st Dec.) I took up some layers, and on cutting them apart I found them to bleed a little, and some of the cut ends were soon covered with a transparent mucilaginous sap. The vine in question was very large and vigorous.