LIFE OF BUDS. 97 



be restored by the amputation of a limb, and the fa- 

 culties remain uninjured after a portion of the brain has 

 been removed. The one set of cases would lead us to 

 suppose that the body is life all over, the other that 

 parts which we are accustomed to look upon as the most 

 vital, are not absolutely essential to vitality. In the 

 case of the bud we know that the life is there, and that 

 it acts downwards to the stem, as well as upwards in 

 the flower and fruit or the leaves and branch of which 

 it may be the origin ; and by availing themselves of that 

 well known property, beautiful flowers and choice fruits, 

 the stems of which are either difficult to raise or not 

 sufficiently durable, can be multiplied at pleasure. 

 Every tree is thus a nursery of plants in its buds, and 

 by those we can multiply those species that do not 

 perfect their seeds in our climate, and so bring to 

 perfection in a few years that which otherwise would 

 require an age. Of the flowers and fructification we 

 need hardly speak, as they do not fail to attract every 

 body's attention, and yet it is a wonderful thing that 

 of these black twigs which seem all so much alike, 

 one should be clothed in the purest white, another in 

 the brightest scarlet, and that another should be tinted 

 with every hue, of which the very minuest speck, con- 

 trary to the colours than man lays by his art, appears 

 the better defined the more it is magnified. All those, 

 too, come from their proper trees with the most unerr- 

 ing certainty, and, could we find them out, depend on 

 laws which must be as simple and as uniform in their 

 operation, as those that bring about the changes of the 

 seasons. 



Nor is the life which is in the plant itself any more 

 K 



