86 THE LAWS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY 



these leaves developed vitally active buds therefore, the total 

 number of abortive or rudimentary buds in the branch must 

 be 15527=128. * 



The reader will remember that this branch is only six years 

 old, and is a mere twig, comparatively speaking. The length 

 of the primary axis is but twenty-seven inches and three lines, 

 and of its greatest secondary axis fifteen inches. How count- 

 less, therefore, must be the number of rudimentary buds in 

 powerful branches, which have been growing for centuries! 

 Each generation of leaves, whose labors brought those 

 branches to their present strength and size, doubtless left 

 behind them buds which now lie concealed in them. The 

 vitality of those buds is not destroyed. Their parent leaves, it 

 may be, have died, and dropped from the tree many years 

 ago; but they still retain, unimpaired, the life which they then 

 received. It is only necessary for them to be placed in cir- 

 cumstances favorable to their growth, to commence the most 

 energetic life-movements. Let some of the leading branches 

 be broken off by the high winds of Winter, and when Spring 

 comes, they will attract the sap which went to those branches 

 to themselves. This will arouse their dormant energies; and 

 so powerful will be the impulse received, that they will force 

 their way through the wood and bark to the surface, and 

 break forth into branches, although that wood and bark may 

 be the growth of years. All must be familiar with the sight 

 of willows and other trees, whose main branches have been 

 thus broken oflj and whose trunks are nevertheless covered 

 with young branches and shoots, the growth of buds which 

 have been buried in their wood, and for years dormant 

 beneath their surface. 



It is necessary, however, here to make some qualifying 

 observations. Every plant possesses a power of forming buds 

 out of any of its cells, when these cells are placed in suitable 

 conditions. Now, although the normal position of a bud is 

 either at the summit of a shpot, or in the axilla of a leaf, yet 

 buds are frequently found also developing from other parts, 

 such as the leaves and roots; and not unfrequently in the case 

 of trees, where the branches have been pollarded, or cut away, 



