110 



THE MANSE GARDEN. 



the bark is eroded; thence adhesion takes place, and 

 then an entire incorporation. This might lead to 

 one mode of engrafting, called inosculation ; and 

 that, again, to the insertion of a twig, at once dis- 

 severed from the parent tree, and set green into the 

 sap of another, as in the common artificial process. 

 There would be the same boldness of conjecture in 

 this experiment as in one that has of late been suc- 

 cessfully performed in the human body. The grow- 

 ing together of two fingers, as by inosculation, above 

 described, is the first discovered fact; and from the 

 knowledge of this, a finger, which had been wholly 

 cut off, was lifted from the ground, carried some dis- 

 tance to the chirurgeon, and, being artfully replaced, 

 adhered, and became fit for all its wonted functions. 

 After the success of grafting, there remained one 

 further trial of nature as to the freedoms which she 

 will sanction namely, the insertion of a bud instead 

 of a twig; and the intimation of her willingness to 

 give countenance to this might be gathered from the 

 fact, that though a graft die away from the top down- 

 wards to the last bud, there is no further difference 

 s to the effect than a retardation caused by the loss 

 of so much wood ; and therefore it might be conjec- 

 tured, that a thing so small as a single bud would be 

 sufficient to answer the expectations of the engrafter. 

 Thus budding and grafting are virtually the same, 

 the one being more wonderful only in this, that the 

 entire change of character produced on the future 

 tree by a single bud is the result of means more 

 slender and apparently more inadequate. 



It cannot be unworthy of remark, that a pheno- 

 menon so striking as that of the mountain-ash bear- 



