ON CUTTINGS. 
37 
issue. It is quite certain that the smallest particle of Fern-seed, perfectly invisible 
to sight, contains a plant true to its genus and species. The same may be said of 
the proud and gnarled Oak. Are we to suppose that either the one or the other, 
during the progress of growth, or when arrived at maturity, has received one particle 
of newly-formed (created) matter ? Yet, what a vast amount of substance has been 
acquired ! and what, indeed, is growth ? Man cannot fathom these mysteries ; yet 
the inquiry is neither profanely daring nor useless in itself, since, in the reflecting 
mind, it must lead to admiration. But taken philosophically, it were well to recur 
once more to the theory of a wise man, lately deceased at an advanced age, who had 
been a zealous servant of Horticulture during a long course of years. We allude to 
the late Mr. James Main, who published a treatise on Vegetable Physiology, in 
which he assumed as his great and leading position, that every being is originally 
perfect in all its parts, and consequently that every increase in bulk, or apparent 
addition of parts or of members, are just so many phenomena of development, and 
nothing more. 
Thus, “vegetables have an organic frame containing certain specific qualities ; 
the former is rudimental, mutable in texture, and expansible under the action of 
air, heat, light, and water ; the latter are accretive, in consequence of accessions of 
vegetable food received from the earth and atmosphere. As the frame is extended 
or expanded, additional food is required to fill up and distend the swelling vessels, 
whereby the whole is enlarged in bulk and weight ; this process being continued 
till the plant arrives at maturity if an annual, or for ever if a perennial.” “Now 
I hold it questionable,” continues Mr. Main, “whether any of the food goes to 
generate organisation. That it fills, distends, supports, and is in fact in connexion 
with the inherent qualities of the plant, the cause of its growth and amplification, is 
perfectly obvious ; but that fluids, whether aqueous or gaseous, however gross, can 
be changed into organic structure ; or even into a single cell of that structure, is 
beyond the powers of my comprehension.” 
Mr. Main had not then obtained any knowledge of those remarkable discoveries 
of organic chemistry which have recently led to the now generally-received theory, 
that nutriment and growth are processes of assimilation, by which the elements or 
constituents of cellular membrane, of water, gum, sugar, gluten, albumen, &c., &c., 
found in vegetable and animal organic bodies, are derived from corresponding 
elements already existing in the food, but diverted and appropriated by vital energy to 
the specific wants of each and every individual. His mind had obtained a glimpse 
of certain great truths. These truths he then announced ; and the philosophic 
chemist has subsequently been enabled to embody them in a rational hypothesis. 
Thus nothing can be generated ; and so far Mr. Main must stand justified with 
many who doubted. Assuming the callus, or first apparent granules of root, 
whatever form they take, to be nothing more than changed, enlarged cambium 
iSuccus p)roprius), we solicit the utmost attention of the physiologist to the earliest 
phenomena of radification as they become revealed from cuttings placed in water. 
