44 GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 



and the various perfumes that mingle with these, are 

 almost infinite. 



The same circumstances mentioned as favorable to high 

 and brilliant coloring, are also favorable to the production 

 of fine flavor. Light, heat, a dry soil, and mod&rato 

 growth, seem to be all essential to fine flavor. On trees 

 somewhat advanced in age, fruits are apt to be higher 

 flavored than on young trees that have just commenced 

 bearing, and in a dry than a wet season. The philosophy 

 of all this is, that in a damp soil or season, or in a shaded 

 situation, when trees are young and growing rapidly, the 

 fruit receives more sap from the tree than can be pro- 

 perly elaborated by the action of the sun and atmosphere 

 on its surface, and, consequently, the sugary principle is 

 produced in small quantities the juice is watery, sour, 

 or insipid, as the case may be. 



The various terms by which flavor is designated, such 

 as sweet, acid, sub-acid, sprightly, perfumed, musky^ 

 spicy, &c., are all well understood. 



SECTION 8. THE SEED. 



The perfect seed contains the rudiments of a plant of 

 the same nature as that which produced it. This rudi- 

 ment of the new plant is called the embryo. It con- 

 sists of three parts the cotyledons (c c, fig. 55), which are 

 the rudiments of the first pair of leaves ; these are the 

 parts that first make their appearance. The bases of 

 these cotyledons are united, and send down the radicle 

 (&), or root, and between them is a bud (a), which sends 

 up the stem, and is usually called \he, plumule. As soon 

 as the seed is excited into germination by the heat and 

 moisture of the earth, this radicle or root begins to peuo- 

 trate the soil, and the plumule ascends in an opposite di- 

 rection ; and thus the growth of the tree goes forward 



