SEAT OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 137 



from its inner surface. When a bud or graft is 

 placed in or upon a stock, it is the interjunction of 

 the member between the wood and the liber of each 

 which forms the union. 



As this vital member is the depository whence all 

 roots proceed, so is it the seat of all incipient buds, 

 and even of flowers. When the Cercis siliqudstrum 

 has a branch pruned off, the wound is healed in the 

 usual way, not by an extension of the old bark or 

 liber, but by the vital envelope gradually closing over 

 it ; and during its progress perfect flowers are ejected 

 from it as well as from the clefts of the old bark. 

 Buds we often see sprouting from the fissures of the 

 bark of old trees, or brought out by pruning or decapi- 

 tation. A truncheon of a willow placed in moist soil, 

 a cutting of a myrtle, or a piece of the root of white- 

 thorn, planted in favourable circumstances, will all 

 produce shoots from the latent buds contained in the 

 vital envelope. In short, no accretion whatever ap- 

 pears, or possibly can appear, of any other member 

 of the plant, save from that one we have endeavoured 

 to describe*. 



It is further manifest, that this slender body of 



* As further proof that huds originate in the indusium, it may 

 be remarked, that, in the case of hollow elms, if the wood be en- 

 tirely decayed, and part of the last-formed layer of alburnum 

 removed, so as to expose the interior side of the vital member, 

 inside shoots will be produced therefrom, and rise within the 

 hollow trunk. 



