REJUVENESCENCE IN NATURE. 45 



the earlier infertile and the later fertile ones, are essentially 

 alike in all other respects. The first shoot bears, after 

 the cotyledon, a basilar, subterranean, amplexical sheath- 

 ing leaf, then in the upraised stem distant smaller and 

 narrower scale-like leaves, which might be taken for 

 hypsophyllary leaves if they were not preferably to be re- 

 garded as cataphyllary formations, since it is their axils 

 that the aciculate, leafless branchlets, arise, which here, 

 as in Ruscus, take the place of the euphyllary leaves. The 

 shoot thus exhibits two essential axes, the main axis with 

 two gradations of the cataphyllary formation ; and the 

 leafless lateral branchlets, which represent the euphyllary 

 formation, and are mostly enriched by others similar 

 (inessential), whence arises the tufted arrangement of 

 these last branchlets. These two essential axes are re- 

 peated in all the succeeding shoots, only progressively 

 more vigorously and richly through the increased number 

 of leaves on the main axis, and through the occurrence of 

 inessential lateral branches, which repeat the upper part 

 of the main axis, and, finally in the most vigorous shoots 

 produce again lateral twigs of the second, third, or even 

 of the fourth degree, whence arises the stately panicled 

 growth of the asparagus. The essential axes are not mul- 

 tiplied by this enrichment until the flower, which arises 

 on each side from the basis of the branches, appears as 

 the third essential sprout-formation of the asparagus. 

 The bearing shoot of the asparagus has thus three different 

 and essential systems of axes or generations of sprouts, 

 but appears, itself, as a whole, only after a series of gene- 

 rations resembling itself, but barren, which are indeed 

 repetitions of the like, but nevertheless essential prepa- 

 ratory or transition links. 



Like the root-stock of the asparagus, the stem of the 

 lime is also a sympodium ; for the lime, from the first 

 annual shoot of the germinating tree onwards, never pro- 

 duces terminal buds, the stem being developed forth from 

 year to year from the uppermost lateral shoot. The lime, 

 when raised from seed, grows very slowly, and does not 



