Vegetable Physiology — Circulotion of the Sap. 35 



limb outside? We saw this experiment repeated for eight years in succes- 

 sion, and 3'et no protuberance was formed at the junction of the limbs. 



In 1839 we superintendel a long range of forcing houses for the produc- 

 tion of early fruits. The house at the west end of the i-ange was devoted to 

 peach culture. On the wall outside of this structure a large Black-heart 

 cherry tree was trained. The points of the branches next to the house had 

 been introduced between the wall and wall plate, and were trained on the 

 back trellis of the peach house, covering about twelve feet square of surface. 

 The house was closed and the temperature raised to 50° about the middle of 

 January. About the first of February the buds on the portion of the cherry 

 tree inside of the house began to burst. Soon the whole surface was covered 

 with snowy blossoms, while the large tree outside was dormant, the soil in 

 which it grew frozen six inches deep and the ground covered with one foot 

 of snow. In the month of May we were clipping off the large bunches of 

 ripe, luscious fruit, while the tree outside was one mass of bloom. The new 

 shoots on the branches inside had ripened their wood growth, and were as 

 bare of foliage as the trees of the forest in winter, while the parent tree out- 

 side was making a vigorous growth. We pause to ask the question : How 

 could the sap descend in the contracted sap vessels of the new bark to the 

 points of the roots in opposition to the upward flow? or how far down the 

 branches when that portion of the tree inside had completed its season's 

 growth ? 



Again, the house at the east end of that range was set apart for the produc- 

 tion of early grapes. On the wall outside of the house a large fig tree was 

 trained. The extreme ends of the shoots had been introduced into the 

 vinery and covered the whole of the trellis on the back wall of the house. In 

 the month of June we were gathering large Brunswick figs, ripe, sweet and 

 delicious, whilst the fruit on the parent tree outside was hard and green. 

 Now, the upward flow of the sap of the fig tree is very abundant and rapid 

 when in vigorous growth. How could the descending si\p from these branches 

 inside that were finishing up their season's growth and forming their em- 

 br\^o fruit, pass the resistless flow of the ascending sap in the branches out- 

 side ? 



The cottage homes of England are enshrined in story and in song because 

 of their woodbine-covered porches and jasmine and rose-covered walls. A 

 lady — a true flower lover — living in one of those quaint Elizabethan struc- 

 tures, in a freak of fancy, had introduced under the window sills of a large 

 bay window, leading shoots of the above named plants, training them up and 

 over every available sjjace. At Christmas time, when the "yule log" was 

 burning and the merry "waits" were singing their plaintive carols, this bay 

 window inside was a "thing of beauty and a joy" — one ma.>^s of flowers and 

 redolent with perfume, and yet the parent shrubs outside were leafless, shorn 

 of their blossoms, and gone to rest for the winter. Where was the capillary 

 attraction to cause a descent of the sap in those portions of the shrubs inside 

 of that bay window ? 



