LETTER XVII. 



183 



rank of a seed, I found nothing on the mere fact that 

 a part of a tree furnished with a bud may be removed 

 from one tree and implanted in another, and that this 

 part may form new attachments to the latter and con- 

 tinue to grow. I rest it on this ground, that from the 

 bud there will come a plant and ultimately a tree, in 

 every respect as complete and perfect as the plant 

 and tree whence it was taken, and equally capable of 

 producing seed after its kind as well as buds after its 

 kind, and that the tree may be thus perpetuated and 

 indefinitely multiplied. Nothing of this sort ever 

 comes of the transference of parts spoken of by Dr 

 Carpenter. But (to make the parallehsm complete), 

 supposing there did. Suppose that, in the ordering 

 of Nature, there should issue from the tooth of a dog, 

 transferred to the comb of a cock, and growing there 

 (as once there issued from a human rib a perfect 

 human form), an organism so like a dog as to be undis- 

 tinguishable from one, and capable of reproducing in 

 the ordinary way that sort of animal, I think Dr Car- 

 penter himself would be puzzled how otherwise to 

 account of it than as a dog. He would not, I pre- 

 sume, dispute Eve's proper individuality. 



10. I have yet two or three things further to say 

 in opposition to Dr Carpenter's view. The first is, 

 that if the evolution of the bud be but a process of 

 continuous growth, it is one in connection with a dead 

 mass. Strange anomaly, if the bud and its produce 



