are formed hi the Hoot alone. 1 85 



other ingredients, complete that production of animated nature, 

 which no other assemblage of matter could produce, and wliich 

 is concluded and finished by a thin thread of the line of life, 

 passing through each ball at its first formation? When aggre- 

 gated into a lai-ger mass, their circle was completed ; and the 

 thread w hich ties them all together is fixed never to be severed, 

 but, passing with them through all their different habitations, ill 

 the side root, centre root, and alburnum vessel in the stem, fixes 

 ihem at last in the seed-vess«l, either incorporating the string 

 with it, as in the lily, or hanging by it, as in the seed of the rose 

 or violet, which seed is afterwards impregnated through this 

 identical '.tring. In the cactus tribe the balls being thoroughly 

 divided, the string is admirably seen, being very thick in pro- 

 portion, and so much more ivoody and solid than the matter of 

 the seeit^ that it is easily distinguished. The seeds are found in 

 every plant about six weeks or two months preceding flowering 

 time, according to the season at which each plant performs that 

 function. In fir trees they rarely begin to show their seeds till the 

 seventh or eighth year of their age, and in other trees rather 

 earlier. 



That the embryo of trees is the same in all plants of the same 

 getms, I am perfectly convinced, from the indifference in the 

 procedure of the plant when grafted or budded ; for the seeds 

 mount as if nothing had happened, and pass into the bud. In- 

 deed, the eye can mark little or no difference between the em- 

 bryo of the herbaceous plant and that of trees ; but the eye i^ 

 scarcely a fair judge in so delicate a matter : probably this i? 

 the real cause that plants will not act in this way in any but their 

 own genus. I have now shown the route this embryo of the 

 seed takes before it is fixed in the bud during the "time that 

 part is in its cradle in the bark. I shall next endeavour to 

 obviate, or rather examine into, the objections I first made my- 

 self, or others suggested to me, respecting this fact, and whether 

 these balls should or not be believed to be the embryo of tlie seed. 



When I first discovered them, I thought they might be air- 

 bubbles: but they cannot be air; because, in all the cactus tribe, 

 if the stem is cut in half in February, the seeds mav be taken 

 out with a pin, dried on a glass, then cut in half, and they will 

 be found perfectly solid. Care must however be taken that a seed 

 is selected not covered ivitli the polle?i, and that the string is Jiot 

 broken too close to the ball. It is covered with points when com- 

 plete, and jHMfectly rouiul. It cannot be air- bubbles, because, 

 when collected in a heap at the bottom of the assemblage of 

 Uids before they pass into the dis])ersing vessel, to view it well 

 the whole must be cut lonaitudinally, and divided into two parts; 

 the lieap is therefore of course separated, and many of the seeds 



halved, 



