ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 273 



But it is true that the conditions in which a bud grows 

 render it liable to extrinsic ills not incidental to a plant 

 springing from seed. A seed, emitting its roots directly 

 into the earth, is liable only to its own ills ; a bud or graft 

 emitting roots, through the alburnum of the stock on which 

 it is established, into the earth, is subject to the infirmities 

 of the stock as well as to its own. Thus a healthy seed 

 produces a healthy plant. A healthy bud may produce 

 a feeble plant, because inoculated upon a diseased branch 

 or stem. 



Instead of a limitation in their nature, there is reason to 

 suppose that trees might flourish to an indefinite age were 

 it not for extrinsic difficulties. A tree, unlike an animal, is 

 not a single, simple organization, it is rather a community 

 of plants. Every bud separately is an elementary plant, 

 capable, if disjoined from the branch, of becoming a tree 

 by itself. In fact, each bud emits roots, which, uniting to- 

 gether, go down upon a common support (the trunk) and 

 enter the earth, and are there put in connection with ap- 

 propriate food. Every fibre of root maybe traced upward 

 to its bud from which it issued. 



In process of time, the elongation of the trunk exposes it 

 to accidents; the branches are subject to the force of 

 storms; in proportion as the distance from the roots 

 increases, and the longer the passages through which the 

 upper sap, or downward elaborated sap travels, the more 

 liabilities are there to stoppage and injury. The reason of 

 decline in a tree is not to be looked for in any exhaustion 

 of vital force in the organization itself, but it is to be found 

 in the immense surface and substance exposed to the wear 

 and tear of the elements. 



It would seem, if this view be true, that no bounds can 

 be placed to the duration of perennial plants, if, by any 

 means, we could diminish their exposure, by reducing their 

 expansion, by keeping them within a certain sphere of 

 growth. Now this is exactly what is accomplisJicd by bud 



12* 



