J passing through the Wood. 5 
ing* and gardening, besides displaying so.exact an analogy be-~ 
tween the animal and vegetable world. 
In the varicds*¢omnients made on my work, many said it was 
absolutely: impossible” the-bud should come from the root, that 
there was no occasion to dissect wood to be convinced of that 
proposition ; in short, it was affirmed in as many words that there 
was io occasion to examine woods; that they possessed so per- 
fect and so intuitive a knowledge of nature independent of in- 
quiry,as made it unnecessary. Another gentleman assured my 
friend that the fact was well known, and exactly described by 
Sir J. Smith... To put an end to this objection, I shall transcribe 
his own observation in his work on physiological botany. He 
says, ** Mr. Knight in the Philosophical Transactions: for 1805 
has shown that buds originate in the alburnum next the bark, 
as might indeed have been expected.” This seems to show that 
Sir J. Smith is of the same opinion. This opinion is certainly 
very different from mine, as I have repeatedly shown that they 
protrude from the root. Willdenow thought that they were 
formed in the bark. Da Hamel gave no decided opinion. on 
the subject. How these gentlemen. could suppose they passed 
* through the bark first, when the round head of the bud first ap- 
pears peeping through the wood, I cannot conceive. Grew 
alone has announced that he has seen the bud pass up through 
the middle of the plant in the interior full six months before it 
shows itself at the exterior of the plant: he must therefore have 
seen it in the root; for the new shoot, at the top of which they 
afterwards appear, could not at that time be formed. How then 
should the bud be protruded there? ’Tis plain, therefore, it ap- 
pears, even at the exterior, first in a lower part of the plant. 
The buds passing from the root will aloue explain some cu- 
rious passages to be found in Cicero and: Pliny, where they de- 
scribe the situation of the tree when the buds were running up: 
and it is plain that the secret of cutting down the tree at the 
proper season, was carefully preserved by the few who possessed 
it, with the most strict.attention paid to the time; otherwise the 
price of the wood.could never have been raised to the enormous 
height it was. Small tables made from the root of the trees so 
* The Flemish farmers find their weeds not only drawn for them, but 
taken off, and the ground thoroughly weeded by hand labour in spring; and 
the weeds, instead of being turned back into the ground, are collected and 
boiled for the milch cows, when green food is so scarce and difficult to be 
had, without expense. The farmers thus get their land weeded for nothing 
by the neighbouring poor, for the purpose of procuring the food for their 
cattle; and those very poor who have not cattle, are paid for gathering it 
for those that have. The farmer is thus freed froma nuisance, and the food 
is excellent. This might be admirably done in Devon and Somersetshire, 
where such nourishing weeds (according to the soil) are constantly found. 
marked 
