214 PRINCIPLES OF GARDENING. [CH. YII. 



indurated. It is the seed-vessel of the pine tribe, 

 the plane tree, and comptonia. 



Though thus vai-jdng in form, they have all one 

 common office, the protection and maturing of the 

 seed they contain. To effect this they require a 

 due supply of sap as well as of the peculiar juice of 

 the parent plant ; for they make no further advance, 

 if the entire wood^ be cut through below them, so 

 that they are only attached to the parent by a strip 

 of bark ; neither will they advance though fully 

 supplied with sap, if the peculiar juices are cut off 

 from them by removing the leaves that are above 

 them on the branch. The loss of such leaves, as 

 stated in a preceding page, may be supplied by in- 

 arching to the denuded branch one stUl retaining its 

 foliage. I have also shewn that the application of a 

 ligature to a peach or apple, shews by the enlarge- 

 ment on one side of the ligature, that the sap really 

 circulates through them. 



Yet each fruit has a peculiar elaboration of its owii 

 to perform, for though the fluids afforded by the 

 branches and leaves be nearly similar, yet each fruit 

 differs from another in fragrance and flavour: six 

 different varieties of the peach and of the apple 

 budded upon the same branch, still retain unaltered 

 their times of ripening, and their distinctive colours 

 and flavours. Now the processes going on at dif- 

 ferent periods of a fruit s growth are very opposite 



