CHAPTER IX. 



OUTSIDE AND IN. 



1. THE elementary study of methods of growth, given 

 in the following chapter, has been many years written, 

 (the greater part soon after the fourth volume of 'Modern 

 Painters ') ; and ought now to be rewritten entirely ; 

 but having no time to do this, I leave it with only a 

 word or two of modification, because some truth and 

 clearness of incipient notion will be conveyed by it to 

 young readers, from which 1 can afterwards lop the 

 errors, and into which 1 can graft the finer facts, better 

 than if I had a less blunt embryo to begin with. 



2. A stem, then, broadly speaking, (I had thus be- 

 gan the old chapter,) is the channel of communica- 

 tion between the leaf and root ; and if the leaf can 

 grow directly from the root there is no stem : so that 

 it is well first to conceive of all plants as consisting 

 of leaves and roots only, with the condition that each 

 leaf must have its own quite particular root* somewhere. 



* Recent botanical research makes this statement more than du- 

 bitable. Nevertheless, on no other supposition can the forms and 

 action of tree-branches, so far as at present known to me, be yet 

 clearly accounted for. 



