546 



VITALITY IN SEEDS AND PLANTS. 



ground, only its connection witli ilic soil, 

 (which is as necessary to it for its nourish- 

 ment as to the seed,) is through the tree by 

 infinitely nice organizations, instead of com- 

 municating directly with it, as is the case 

 with the seed : then it follows, from the 

 last branch of the proposition, that all the 

 buds upon a tree are at most but anrmals; 

 for they grow but for one season, or until 

 they have formed upon them other buds, 

 which, according to the first branch of the 

 proposition, being other individuals,- and 

 once beginning to grow, take the place of 

 the former, whose period of duration, there- 

 fore, is already past, and the wood and bark 

 made by them during their period, as well 

 as all preceding growths, can, for the future, 

 only serve the purpose of a staff and me- 

 dium for the latter, which now, and until 

 their course is in like manner terminated, 

 have their connection through (hem and by 

 their aid with the earth. This, though it 

 seems to be refining too much, yet appears 

 to me to be the legitimate consequence of 

 the reasoning when fully carried out. 



That can not be a good argument which, 

 setting out to maintain that a tree lines for- 

 ever, ends in proving that it is rather a 

 " community of 'plants,'" and that the indi- 

 vidual plants are at most but annuals. 



There are innumerable facts, within the 

 every-day knowledge and experience of 

 woodsmen practically acquainted with our 

 forests, which go to show, that " the trunk" 

 of a tree, or wood of previous years, is 

 more than what Mk. Beecher calls " a com- 

 mon support for the united roots emitted by 

 the buds, and upon which they go down into 

 the earth," &c., according to his view. 

 There is a marked and well known differ- 

 ence between the green or living, and the 

 dead wood of a tree. All the living wood 

 in the trunk of a tree is one vast artery, 



through which the ascending sap is con- 

 veyed to the branches, by a force similar to, 

 if it be not the very same, with that of capil- 

 lary attraction. And the branches are so 

 many other smaller arteries, proceeding 

 from the trunk, by which the sap is further 

 conveyed to the extremities and to the buds 

 and leaves. Whilst it remains in these 

 latter, a portion not required is thrown off, 

 and another necessary portion is inhaled or 

 imbibed, and added from the air, and the 

 food thus elaborated, is returned on the out- 

 side of the previous year's wood, and being 

 diffused over the ichole thereof, is hardened 

 into a new growth of wood and bark — that 

 next the former year's wood being wood, 

 and that next the former year's bark being 

 bark. Thus the tree grows or is increased 

 in size. And the pith or heart at the centre 

 of the tree, as well as its bark on the out- 

 side, have also their appropriate functions — 

 one function of the bark being first to ab- 

 sorb and then to exhale or evaporate the 

 watery portion of the returned sap, in which 

 the materials for the woody fibre have been 

 till now held in solution, but which, being 

 taken up and exhaled or evaporated through 

 the bark, the hardening of the returned sap 

 into wood is thus, little by little, or gradu- 

 ally during the growing season, accomplish- 

 ed. In confirmation of all which I need 

 only cite, that, for the making of maple su- 

 gar, the tree is bored into the wood, and the 

 sugar-water is obtained from the wood, and 

 is no other than the ascending sap in its 

 first or rudest adaptation : and that, in gird- 

 ling a sugar maple and many other kinds 

 of trees, as gum, buckeye, lime, beech, 

 sycamore, white elm, &c., although a chip 

 be taken out six inches long and one or 

 even two inches thick all round the tree, it 

 is often the third year after before it will 

 die ; and, throughout the first and often the 



