— 
The Rev. P. Kr1ru on the Origin of Buds. ` A81. 
doctrine of the writer, who discards the hypothesis of Du Hamel 
- and of Knight, I cannot see how we are to do without it; as he 
seems to acknowledge no movement of any individual bud be- 
yond that which must arise from the general expansion of the 
whole shoot, excepting a horizontal movement. But if it has 
been. shown that buds do occasionally issue from points on the 
surface of the stem, to which they could not possibly have come 
by any horizontal channel, then we shall be compelled to ac- 
count for their appearance in some other way. 
'l'he second hypothesis is not without its difficulties, any more 
than the first; but it accounts much better for the anomaly in 
question. "The impenetrable veil which overhangs the subject 
of generation, whether animal or vegetable, whether seminal or 
by a bud, conceals for ever from the observation of man the. 
commencement of those recondite and mysterious processes by 
Which the operation is effected, and leaves us no resource be- 
yond that of watching its future results, and forming our opi- 
nions by inference. Hence the hypotheses of Du Hamel and 
of Knight, by both of which we have the means of conveying 
buds to every new layer of wood in all imaginable cases, not ex- 
cepting even the case that I have now presented to the notice 
of this Society; and yet we need not confine ourselves to the . 
precise terms or principle of either the one or the other. Du 
Hamel gives to the plant a profusion of what he calls pre-orga- 
nized germs, but I do not recollect that he specifies their origin. 
Mr. Knight gives to the proper juice an unlimited capacity of 
forming and of dispersing buds,—which may be thought to be 
rather too gratuitous, particularly as his experiments do not so 
much prove that buds are formed by the proper juice, as that 
they are nourished by it. But if it is admitted that one bud 
has the capacity of generating others like itself, the difficulty is 
surmounted. Say that this process is effected by the bud or 
VOL. XVI. 5x : buds 
