174< VEGETABLE ORGANOGRAPHY. 



Every leaf bears a bud* in its axil, ,and every bud is 

 the rudiment of a nevi' branch. It may happen then, and 

 it does so in fact sometimes, that all the buds of a shoot 

 are developed into branches ; but most frequently some 

 of them, better situated than the others, being developed 

 first, attract all the sap ; and the others being starved, 

 as we should say, by these voracious neighbours, die of 

 exhaustion. When this phenomenon takes place early, 

 no trace remains of these abortive buds : this is the 

 reason that the branches of most trees are neither so 

 numerous, nor so regularly disposed, as the leaves. Let 

 us abandon the abortive buds, and proceed to those 

 which change into branches. 



A bud is always placed at the summit of a fibre, and 

 communicates, most frequently, with the medullary 

 sheath, by the medullary rays, at the summit of which 

 it seems situated. It communicates, however, very evi- 

 dently, with the woody body ; and is invested with a 

 bark, which is a continuation of the cortical body. As 

 soon as it begins to elongate, it presents, like the young 

 stem, a medullary canal and a woody layer : during its 

 growth, its base is, as it were, inserted into the woody 

 layer upon which it originated ; this is owing to the 

 development which takes place at the same time as 

 that of a new woody layer of the stem which bears it : 

 the following year the young branch forms a second 

 woody layer, and is found inserted into the trunk by a 

 new layer which surrounds it. Thus I suppose that a 

 branch is produced upon a stem ten years old ; at the 

 end of the eleventh year of the tree's age, the branch 

 will have one layer, and its base will be surrounded by 

 the eleventh layer of the stem ; at the end of the twelfth 



• We are here examining the branches as being the development of a 

 bud; the structure of the bud itself, supposing a knowledge of ahnost all 

 the organs of plants, cannot be described till Book iv. Chap. vii. 



