110 On the Anatomy of Vegetables. 



ficult to unite clearness with elegance : to be exactly understood, 

 and to prove the propositions I advance, is all I aim at : to fix 

 the exact fonndation of the anatomy of botany, is my only wish: 

 completing this, I think I shall die in peace, and in the hope 

 that I have not lived quite in vain for the science I so highly 

 prize, and to which I have dedicated so many years. 

 I am, sir. 



Your obliged servant, 



Dawlish, July 2, 1816. AgNES IbBETSON. 



Explanation of the Plate. 

 In giving the few specimens, though for want of room I shall 

 not be able to give the twelve ; yet I hope I may draw a series 

 sufficient to thoroughly explain the formation of the seed in its 

 regular process, ist. The view of the radicles and the passage 

 of the powder into ball : the part from a to b being generally 

 lost in the earth when the root is taken up, if great care is not 

 had to prevent the accident, but they are always to be found 

 in the ground. Fig. 1, natural size, is made rather too 

 large. Fig. 2 is the vessels running through the root, and all 

 centring in the alburnum vessels, and proceeding up to the dif- 

 ferent buds, but not entering them. The buds are then seen to 

 forsake them, and to pass up into the new shoot just formed, by 

 stalks growing under each bud, as in fig. 7, and thus running up 

 to their proper places in the new shoot. This is the reason why 

 the new wood is always, grooved, even when that shape is lost 

 in more advanced age — the stalks growing within the groove. 

 Fig. 4 is the new shoot round which the buds have arranged them- 

 selves, and a vessel formed to convey the balls from bud to bud, 

 dropping so many at each pericarp ; which then closes on them, 

 while the collection from which they run at LL decreases 

 hourlv till it is all exhausted. In the arum, when the seeds are 

 about to enter the seed-vessel, if a specimen is taken horizon- 

 tallv, the seeds may be seen for the next hour to move into the 

 different pericarps up the stem of the flower at fig. 4, drawn 

 in by the line of life at dd. Then follows the last scene, the 

 seeing those very balls fructified, which had moved from the root 

 upwards, and the embryo growing in the ball. The ball is cer- 

 tainly only the heart of the seed, and reaches from z to w, at 

 fig. 6. I know not how these specimens can be otherwise ex- 

 plained. The fructification proves it the seed ; besides that I 

 continue to follow it up till the seed puts on its cover and drops 

 into the earth. And there is no reason brought against these 

 numerous facts, except that it was never discovered before, and 

 that the flower-bud is made (Mr. Knight supposes) in the bark. 

 That the leaf-bud is formed there I have always shown j but that 



the 



