Evolution of Vegetal Life. ll5 



We have now completed the cycle. Starting from the 

 flower, we have followed the life-steps until we have reached 

 it again. Another course which we might have . adojjted, 

 the one ordinarily chosen by fruit-growers, is that of bud- 

 ding or grafting. We should then have simply taken a sin- 

 gle bud in the one case, a small twig in the other, from the 

 variety which we desired to propagate, and inserted it into 

 a sturdy stock of a nearly related kind, in which we had 

 made an incision, bringing the inner bark into close contact, 

 and excluding the air from the joint. What is the result 

 of this process ? Excepting in a few special cases, which 

 I cannot stop to describe, the line of union between the two 

 growths becomes indeed a line of union, but remains a line 

 of separation. It is like the door of the underworld of 

 which Dante speaks, though perhaps the prospect is not so 

 hopeless. Your quince or crab stock is firmly rooted in the 

 ground ; it draws thence its juices and transfers them from 

 cell to cell, to those of the new bud ; but here they '•' suffer 

 a sea change into something rich and strange." Your bud 

 multii^lies its cells, — becomes a twig.— a branch; it buds, 

 it blossoms, and instead of the woody but fragrant quince, 

 the rosy but diminutive crab-apple, you gather the pear- 

 main, the wine-sap, or the seek-no-further, as you may have 

 elected. 



But stop. Do you always gather a fruit exactly like 

 that with which you were familiar? Do you invariably 

 obtain from the seed or cutting of your rose a flower of the 

 same identical tint — of the same form, of the same fra- 

 grance ? Not so : you find slight differences, for the better 

 or for the worse ; scarcely any two are precisely alike ; you 

 choose those that you prefer and propagate them ; you neg- 

 lect the others. 



We have seen that Gray enumerates six species of wild 

 roses in the Northern United States. There are also a num- 

 ber of wild species in the Eastern Hemisphere — how many 

 I cannot tell you. But their cultivation began at an early 

 date, and they have been developed and crossed inextri- 

 cably. In 1793 some wild Scotch roses were transplanted 

 into a garden. One bore flowers slightly tinged with red ; 

 from this, double roses were developed, blush, crimson, })ur- 

 ple, red, marbled, two colored, white and yellow, and differ- 

 ing as much in size and shape. In 1841 the number of 

 varieties in the nursery-gardens near Glasgow was estimated 



