I 



122 ON THE REPRODUCTION OF BUDS. 



that the alburnous tubes possess lateral, as well as terminal orifices : and 

 it does not appear improbable that the lateral as well as the terminal 

 orifices of the alburnous tubes may possess the power to generate central 

 vessels ; which vessels evidently feed, if they do not give existence to, the 

 reproduced buds and leaves. And therefore, as the preceding experi- 

 ments appear to prove that the buds neither spring from the medulla nor 

 the bark, I am much inclined to believe that they are generated by central 

 vessels which spring from the lateral orifices of the alburnous tubes. The 

 practicability of propagating some plants from their leaves may seem to 

 stand in opposition to this hypothesis ; but the central vessel is always a 

 component part of the leaf, and from it the bud and young plant probably 

 originate. 



I expected to discover in seeds a similar power to regenerate their 

 buds ; for the cotyledons of these, though dissimilar in organisation, exe- 

 cute the office of the alburnum, and contain a similar reservoir of nutri- 

 ment, and at once supply the place of the alburnum and the leaf. But 

 no experiments which I have yet been able to make, have been decisive, 

 owing to the difficulty of ascertaining the number of buds previously 

 existing within the seed. Few, if any, seeds, I have reason to believe, 

 contain less than three buds, one only of which, except in cases of acci- 

 dent, germinates, and some seeds appear to contain a much greater num- 

 ber. The seed of the peach appears to be provided with ten or twelve 

 leaves, each of which probably covers the rudiment of a bud, and the 

 seeds, like the buds of the horse-chestnut, contain all the leaves, and 

 apparently all the buds of the succeeding year : and I have never been 

 able to satisfy myself that all the buds were eradicated without having 

 destroyed the base of the plumule, in which the power of reproducing 

 buds probably resides, if such power exists. 



Nature appears to have denied to annual and biennial plants (at least 

 to those which have been the subjects of my experiments) the power 

 which it has given to perennial plants to reproduce their buds; but 

 nevertheless some biennials possess, under peculiar circumstances, a very 

 singular resource, when all their buds have been destroyed. A turnip, 

 bred between the English and Swedish variety, from which I had cut off 

 the greater part of its fruit-stalks, and of which all the buds had been 

 destroyed, remained some weeks in an apparently dormant state ; after 

 which the first seed in each pod germinated, and bursting the seed-vessel, 

 seemed to execute the office of a bud and leaves to the parent plant, 

 during the short remaining term of its existence, when its preternatural 

 foliage perished with it. Whether this property be possessed by other 



