LETTER XV. 



163 



[Balfour says regarding roots : — Roots have no 

 proper leaf-buds ; but in certain circumstances they 

 are capable of producing them."* This statement 

 seems to me to furnish a sufficient explanation of what 

 occurred in the Elm, and to be a sufficient reply to 

 the objection founded upon it. Let me observe fur- 

 ther, however, that of the many different sorts of 

 trees, in none perhaps is the capacity mentioned by 

 Dr Balfour greater than in the Elm. It is matter of 

 notoriety that growing naturally and entire, it con- 

 tinually throws out branches along almost the whole 

 length of the trunk, and to such an extent often, as to 

 present one unbroken mass of foliage from the ground 

 to the summit of the tree. Moreover, the reduction 

 of the Elm to the condition to which the gale of wind 

 reduced Dr Carpenter's, is daily practised with a view 

 to the propagation of it by grafting. " The mode 

 of propagation resorted to in the case of the English 

 Elm is usually by means of suckers from the parent- 

 tree. And the best description of suckers are those 

 which are produced by trees that have been cut dose 

 to the ground."! short, to any one at all familiar 



Class-Book of Botany, p. 52. Roots in point of fact produce 

 buds oftener and more generally than would appear from Dr Bal- 

 four's statement. Only under ordinary circumstances, i. €» from 

 the divergent influence of the vegetation going on in the branches 

 at the further end, they remain "latent" or "dormant." — (See 

 Letter XIV. § 7.) 



t Book of Trees (J. W, Parker), 3d ed. Pp. 137-8. 



