SECRETAEY'S REPORT. 139 



period of vigor and of decline may be extended by influences 

 favorable to the health of any particular tree, as it may also be 

 shortened by unfavorable influences ; but he holds that sooner or 

 later, it must develope the decline and decay incident to. old age, 

 and finally become extinct. 



Other eminent horticulturists, among whom are Lindley and 

 Downing, dissent from the views of Mr. Knight, and believe that 

 no such resemblance exists between the life of a tree and of an 

 animal. They hold that a bud, equally with a seed, contains the 

 germ of a new life ; and that when a bud, or a cutting or layer 

 having upon it several buds^ strikes root into the earth, it becomes 

 a new plant, as really as if grown from a seed. They believe that 

 if a bud or a scion is engrafted upon a seedling stock and unites 

 with it, striking its roots first into the stock instead of directly into 

 the earth like a cutting, that such tree starts anew with all the 

 vital energy of the parent plant. One of them* says : " With the 

 exception of their integuments, a bud and a seed are the same 

 thing. A seed is but a bud prepared for one set of circumstances, 

 and a bud is a seed prepared for another set of circumstances — it 

 is the same embryo in difiereut garments. The seed has been called 

 therefore a 'primary bud,' the difference being one of condition 

 and not of nature. It is manifest then that the plant which springs 

 from a bud is as really a new plant as that which springs from* a 

 seed ; and it is equally true that a seed may convey the weakness 

 and diseases of its parent with as much facility as a bud or a graft 

 does. If the feebleness of ^ tree is general, its functions languid, 

 its secretions thin, then a bud or graft will be feeble — and so would 

 be its seed ; or if a tree be tainted with disease, the buds would 

 not escape, nor the trees springing from them. "'= * The condi- 

 tions in which a bud grows render it liable to extrinsic ills not 

 incidental to a plant springing from seed. A seed emitting its 

 roots directly into the earth is liable otily to its own ills ; a bud or a 

 graft emitting roots through the alburnum of the stock on which it is 

 established, into the earth, is subject to the infirmities of the stock 

 as well as its own. Thus, a healthy seed produces a healthy plant. 

 A healthy bud may produce a feeble plant because inoculated 

 upon a diseased. branch or stem." 



Accordingly, the advocates of the latter theory account for the 



*Rev. H. W. Beecher, in Horticulturist, Oct., 1^46. 



