LETTER YIII. 



73 



it would have been regarded and spoken of as mere 

 annual growths. The tree-^^lant, on the contrary, and 

 its progeny, might have grown and extended them- 

 selves year by year as distinct and separate plants, 

 and the so-called annual growths or shoots been 

 looked upon as perfect and independent plants. They 

 could not, in this case, have been called tree-plants ; 

 yet such might have been the constitution and ha- 

 bitudes of the oak-plant, of the beech-plant, and 

 others. 



10. But we need not have recourse to a speculation 

 of this kind. We cannot, it is true, cause the potato- 

 plant to grow after the manner of the tree ; but we 

 can cause the individual plants composing the tree to 

 grow after the manner of the potato, and may see their 

 shoots striking down separately into the soil, and 

 growing up independently one of another, the stems 

 themselves (the counterpart of the tubers), to which 

 were attached the buds from which the shoots sprang, 

 speedily rotting and passing away. We can plant the 

 willow as we do the potato, and with like results. 

 Were it to serve any good end, we should have our 

 willow-fields as we have our potato-fields. In precisely 

 the same way as year by year we raise a crop of 

 potatoes, and with as much ease, we might raise 

 annually a crop of willows. Cutting off the last year's 

 shoots from a willow-tree, and planting them in a moist 

 soil, we may obtain as many young willow-plants and 



