244 
BUD VARIATION. 
By MAXWELL T. MASTERS, M.D., F.R.S. 
T HE reproduction of plants is effected in one of two ways, 
either by the contact of one elementary organism with 
another of a different kind, in consequence of which a spore or 
an embryo is formed, which ultimately developes into a perfect 
plant, or by the production of buds. 
The word bud is here used in a broad sense to express any 
separable portion of a plant, not produced by sexual agency, 
and which when separated has the power of growing into an 
organism like the parent plant. The process of bud-formation 
then, reduced to its simplest expression, is a process of segmen- 
tation, or subdivision. Illustrations are to be found through- 
out the whole vegetable kingdom, but in no family are they 
more frequent, or do they play a more important part, than in 
the great group of the Fungi, among which are the moulds and 
blights so destructive to the higher plants on which they grow. 
One of the most remarkable circumstances«about these plants is 
the varied manner in which they are reproduced. Spores, or 
reproductive bodies of four, five, or more shapes are met with at 
different times on the same plant, and, inasmuch as they are 
often formed at various times and under diverse conditions, it 
is no matter for surprise that they should have been assigned, 
not to the same plant, but to different ones, and hence each one 
has had the misfortune of being separately named.* Now, 
thanks to the labours of those who have, with infinite skill and 
patience, succeeded in unravelling the life-history of these 
plants, all these varied forms are known to be different states 
of the same plant. Of these spores some are true reproductive 
bodies in the sense already explained, while others are buds 
extending and multiplying the plant, but not reproducing it. 
We do not know in all cases, indeed we only know in a few, 
* See a paper on the subject of Polymorphism in Fungi, in u Popular 
Science Review,” Jan. 1871, y Mr. M. C. Cooke. 
