r.KJVIMIPAROUS ANIMALS. 427 



striking illustrations of that repairing attribute of the vital 

 principle, to which our attention has been already (p. 19.) 

 directed. 



from those which regulate the continuance of plants obtained immediate- 

 ly from the germination of the seed. MARSHALL, in his Rural Eco- 

 nomy of Glocestersh ire, published 1789, vol. ii. p. 239., remarks, "En- 

 grafted fruits are not permanent, they continue but for a time." KNIGHT, 

 in his Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear, p. 6., has followed up 

 the same idea, when he says, u The continuance of every variety appears to 

 be confined to a certain period, during the early part of which only it can be 

 propagated with advantage to the planter." BUCKNALL carries these views 

 still farther : Trans, Soc. En. Arts vol. xvii. p. 268. " When the first stock 

 shall, by mere dint of old age, fall into actual decay, a nihility of vegetation, 

 the dcscendents, however young, or in whatever situation they may be, 

 will gradually decline ; and from that time it would become imprudent, in 

 point of profit, to attempt propagating that variety from any of them." 

 From these statements, Sir JAMES E. SMITH, Introd. Bot. p. 138. and 139. 

 seems to consider it as established, that " propagation by seeds is the only 

 true reproduction of plants." 



The sympathy which is here considered as prevailing between the parent 

 stock and its extensions or descendents, or the dependence of the life of the 

 latter on the duration of that of the former, the basis of this opinion, is not 

 only unsupported by proof, but is directly at variance with a multitude of 

 common occurrences. 



The wall-flower and sweet-william plants, whose natural term of life rare- 

 ly extends beyond two years, or until all the branches flower once, may be 

 continued for many years, by being propagated by means of cuttings of 

 the slips. Even the annual stem of the Scarlet Lychnis, may be convert- 

 ed into separate plants of many years duration. If the existence of this de- 

 pendence of the plants derived from cuttings, on the life of the parent plant 

 from which they were taken, can thus be disproved in those species on 

 which we can most easily make accurate observations, it must appear un- 

 philosophical to believe that it exists in those which outlive us by many 

 centuries, and the laws of whose duration, therefore, have not yet been de- 

 termined. 



The distinction between propagation by seed, and extension by cuttings, 

 if restricted to. the manner of multiplying plants, may be harmless in science, 

 and in horticulture useful ; but when it includes an expression of a law of 

 vegetable life, of difference in the products, as if the plants obtained by the 



