l^OTES 



Note A. — Letter XIY., page 154. 



Dr Lindley thus expresses himself in regard to the excep- 

 tions taken to the doctrine of the woody tissue of trees being 

 descending matter : — 



The most important of the objections which have been 

 taken to this opinion are the following : — If wood were really 

 organised matter emanating from the leaves, it must neces- 

 sarily happen that in grafted plants the stock would in time 

 acquire the nature of the scion, because its wood would be 

 formed entkely by the addition of new matter, said to be fur- 

 nished by the leaves of the scion. So far is this, however, 

 from being the fact, that it is well known that, in the oldest 

 grafted trees, there is no action whatever exercised by the 

 scion upon the stock ; but that, on the contrary, a distinct line 

 of organic demarcation separates the wood of one from the 

 other, and the shoots emitted from the stock, by wood said to 

 have been generated by the leaves of the scion, are in all 

 respects of the nature of the stock. Again, if a ring of bark 

 from a red- wooded tree is made to grow in the room of a 

 similar ring of bark of a white-wooded tree, as it easily may be 



