ts to ioyne
with which stockes, you shall then learne to cut and chuse your grafts
in this manner: looke from what tree you desire to take your grafts, you
shall goe vnto the very principall branches thereof, and looke vp to the
vpper ends, and those which you finde to be fairest, smoothest, and
fullest of sappe, hauing the little knots, budds, or eyes, standing
close and thicke together, are the best and most perfect, especially if
they grow vpon the East side of the tree, whereon the Sunne first
looketh; these you shall cut from the tree in such sort that they may
haue at least three fingars of the olde woode ioyning to the young
branch, which you shall know both by the colour of the barke, as also by
a little round seame which maketh as it were a distinction betwixt the
seuerall growths. Now you shall euer, as neere as you can, chuse your
grafts from a young tree, and not from an olde, and from the tops of the
principall branches, and not from the midst of the tree, or any other
superfluous arme or cyon; now if after you haue got your grafts you haue
many dayes Iourneys to carry them, you shall fould them in a few fresh
mouldes, and binde them about with hay, and hay ropes, and so carry them
all day, and in the night bury them all ouer in the ground and they will
containe their goodnesse for a long season.

{SN: How to graft in the Cleft.}
Hauing thus prepared your grafts, you shall then beginne to graft, which
worke you shall vnderstand may be done in euery month of the yeere,
except Nouember and October, but the best is to beginne about Christmas
for all earely and forward fruit, and for the other, to stay till March:
now hauing all your implements and necessaryes about you, fit for the
Grafting, you shall first take your grafts, of what sort soeuer they be,
and hauing cut the neather ends of them round and smoth without raysing
of the barke, you shall then with a sharp knife, made in the proportion
of a great pen-knife slice downe each side of the grafts, from the seame
or knot which parts the olde woode from the new, euen to the neather
end, making it flat and thinne, cheifely in the lowest part, hauing
onely a regardfull eye vnto the pith of the graft, which you may by no
meanes cut or touch, and when you haue thus trimmed a couple of grafts,
for moe I doe by no meanes alow vnto one stocke, although sundry other
skilfull workmen in this Art alow to the least stocke two grafts, to the
indifferent great three, and