VII. 



BUDS AND SEEDS. 



THE well known fact that buds can be separated 

 from a plant, and under certain conditions pro- 

 duce other plants, in a manner somewhat similar 

 to seeds, has led many to suppose that on the 

 original plant they lead a sort of independent 

 existence — in fact that a plant may be considered 

 as a colony instead of an individual, and that it 

 leads much the same kind of life as a colony of 

 sponges, each individual bud drawing its own sup- 

 port from the soil in the same manner as each 

 individual in a sponge obtains its food from the 

 surrounding water. 



To carry out this idea the most astonishing errors 

 concerning the structure of plants have been put 

 forth. Thus, Erasmus Darwin, in his celebrated 

 " Phytologia," published in 1800, says: " The bark 

 is only an intermixture of the caudexes of the 

 numerous buds as they pass down to shoot their 

 radicles into the earth." 



Mcintosh, in his Book of the Garden, says, in 

 speaking of the mutual influence of the stock and 

 graft: " Since then the developments of the graft 



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