GEMBMIPAROUS ANIMALS. 497 
striking illustrations of that repairing: attribute of the vital 
principle, to which our attention has been already (p. 19.) 
directed, 
from those which regulate the continuance of plants obtained immediate- 
ly from the germination of the seed. Marsuaxt, in his Rural Eco- 
nomy of Glocestershire, published 1789, vol. ii. p. 239., remarks, ‘¢ En- 
grafted fruits are not permanent, they continue but for a time.’ Kwicut, 
in his Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear, p. 6., has followed up 
the same idea, when he says, *‘ The continuance of every variety appears to 
be confined to a certain period, during the early part of which only it can be 
propagated with advantage to the planter.” Bucknawt carries these views 
still farther : Trans, Soc. En. Arts vol. xviis p- 268. ‘+ When the Jirst stock 
shall, by mere dint of old age, fall into actual decay, a nihility of vegetation, 
—the descendents, however young, or in whatever situation they may be, 
will gradually decline ; and from that time it would become imprudent, in 
point of profit, to attempt propagating that variety from any of them.” 
From these statements, Sir James E. Smitu, Introd. Bot. p. 138. and 139. 
seems to consider it as established, that ‘* propagation by seeds is the only 
true reproduction of plants.” 
The sympathy which is here considered as prevailing between the parent 
stock and its extensions or descendents, or the dependence of the life of the 
latter on the duration of that of the former, the basis of this opinion, is not 
only unsupported by-proof, but is directly at variance with a multitude of 
common occurrences. 
The wall-flower and sweet-william plants, whose natural term of life rare- 
ly extends beyond two years, or until all the branches flower once, may be 
continued for many years, by being propagated by means of cuttings of 
the slips. Even the annual stem of the Scarlet Lychnis, may be conyert- 
ed into separate plants of many years duration. If the existence of this de- 
pendence of the plants derived from cuttings, on the life of the parent plant 
from which they were taken, can thus be disproved in those species on 
which we can most easily make accurate observations, it must appear un- 
philosophical to believe that it exists in those which outlive us by many 
centuries, and the laws of whose duration, therefore, have not yet been de- 
termined. 
The distinction between propagation by seed, and extension by cuttings, 
if restricted to the manner of multiplying plants, may be harmless in science, 
and in horticulture useful; but when it includes an expression of a law of 
vegetable life, of difference in the products, as if the plants obtained by the 
