556 Vegetable Vitality. [November, 



and tlie same doctrine has been held concerning fruit trees. The 

 great advocate of this view, the late Mr. Andrew Knight, rested his 

 case upon the disappearance of certain kinds of Apples and Pears, 

 once to be found in the orchards of Herefordshire, but now no lon- 

 ger to be met with. This he ascribed to cultivated varieties being 

 naturally short-lived, and to an impossibility of arresting their 

 gradual decay by any process of dismemberment ; and following out 

 this theory he strongly urged the necessity of renewing vitality by 

 continually raising fresh varieties from seed. It is difficult to com- 

 prehend what train of reasoning led to this speculation. We know 

 that wild plants may be propagated by dismemberment for an indefi- 

 nite period ; we know that when such wild plants spring up from 

 seed, the dismembering process still goes on, and still without ex- 

 hibiting symptoms of exhausted vitality ; and yet if a plant grows in 

 a garden, and is brought under the direct control of man, the power 

 is thought to be lost, or so much impaired that indefinite multiplica- 

 tion no longer becomes possible. Can this be true ? Most assuredly 

 the cases adduced in support of the doctrine are susceptible of an- 

 other explanation, perfectly consistent with the general laws of veg- 

 etation. 



That renewal by seed will not restore what is called exhausted vi- 

 tality, was sufficiently proved by the experiments with Potatos after 

 the blight made its appearance. We were assured by an ingenius 

 writer in one of the daily papers that the constitutional power of 

 the Potato was on the decline ; in other words, that the lives of in- 

 dividuals were approaching their end ; that the blight arose in con- 

 sequence, and that a certain remedy would be the renewal of the 

 existing races by sowing seeds. Hundreds joined eagerly in what 

 proved to be the vain pursuit. A worthy armorer at Solingen even 

 published an elaborate pamphlet in support of the idea. ' No more 

 Famine ' was his audacious motto — a prediction wofully falsified by 

 the result, for the seeding Potatos, were, if possible, more diseased 

 than their parents." 



" Cabbage," says the Edinhurgh Review, •' contains more muscle- 

 sustaining nutriment than any other vegetable, whatever. Boiled 

 cabbage and corned beef, make fifty-two as good dinners in twelve 

 months as a man can eat." 



