LJ 



OFTH 

 THEORY OF BUDDING. 121 



the tree is not converted into the parasite, 

 essential to the life of the latter that the tree bear 

 its own leaves, in order to prepare and continue the 

 aliment of the foster plant; but in the case of bud- 

 ding all may be cut off except what grows out of 

 the bud, and thus the whole nature and character 

 of the tree are completely changed. Again, the 

 seed of one species of tree is often sown by the 

 Tvinds, or otherwise, on the cleft of one of another 

 species ; but in this case also there is a total want 

 of analogy, for the decayed moss, and debris of old 

 bark washed down by the rains into the cleft, con- 

 stitute merely the alluvial soil in which the seed- 

 ling grows. Thus the mountain-ash may be seen 

 growing, as it were, out of the sycamore, or the 

 sycamore out of the body of the mountain-ash ; 

 but these trees are not, by such natural process, 

 mutually convertible the one into the other. But 

 by the art of budding or grafting, the mountain- 

 ash may become the stock on which no other leaf 

 than that of the pear should be suffered to unfold 

 itself, and from which an abundant crop of pears 

 may be gathered. Although nature, so far as I 

 know, presents nothing in her operations analogous 

 to the art in question, yet there may be observed 

 in her proceedings some things which might sug- 

 gest experiments in that art. In the dense forest, 

 owing to the crowding and crossing of branches, an 

 accidental union is sometimes exhibited; the winds 

 cause friction, by which the bark is eroded; thence 

 adhesion takes place, and then an entire incorpora- 



