300 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



SEEDLINGS FROM BUDDED PEACHES. 



Mr. Nicholas Longworth inqiiires: "Will the pit of 

 the budded peach produce the same fruit as the bud, or as 

 the stock, or a mixture of the two ?" And he also says, " I 

 have never fairly tested the question, but my experience 

 led me to believe that the budded pit produced the same 

 fruit as the original stock." 



So far as this question can be determined (independently 

 of experiment) upon the known laws of the vegetable king- 

 dom, we say that it will not produce fruit like that of the 

 original stock ; nor will it, on the other hand, with any cer- 

 tainty, reproduce the budded kind. 



If the pit of a budded variety takes after the stoch^ we 

 must very much change our theory of the office of leaves, 

 and perhaps of the bark. At present, the received and 

 orthodox teaching is, that the sap from the root is crude 

 and undigested until it has received in the leaf a chemical 

 change. Until then, the sap does not materially influence 

 the vegetable tissue, nor form new substance, or aifect the 

 fruit. But after its elaboration in the leaf, a returning cur- 

 rent of prepared sap (similar in its functions to arterial 

 blood), sets downward, distributing to every part of the 

 vegetable economy the properties required by each. The 

 sap arising from the root, does not touch the channel of 

 fruit until it has been chemically changed; and the differ- 

 ence exhibited in the fruit of one tree compared with 

 another, arises, primarily from the nature of the sap which 

 it receives ; the sap receives its qualities by a digestion in 

 the leaf,* In all cases, then, we suppose the leaf to deter- 

 mine the nature of the fruit (and the root in no case, and 

 the trunk in no case), since the stem is, so far as sap is con- 

 cerned, but a bundle of canals for its passage — a mere high- 



* The fruit itself still further elaborates the sap, else a peach would be 

 ae acrid as the juice of the peach leaf. 



