BUD VARIATION. 
245 
the complete life history of these plants and the particular office 
the hud-like formations fulfil. For our present purpose, how- 
ever, it will suffice to say that they vary in size, form, and 
apparently in the conditions under which they are produced. 
In spite of these diversities, we know that they develop into 
organisms precisely like those from which they sprung. 
Among the sea-weeds the same state of affairs exists ; there 
are true spores and bud-spores, and these bud-spores vary in 
character on the same plant at different times and in different 
seasons. 
In the Lichens we have a similar formation of true spores 
and bud-spores, but so far as is at present known, there is not the 
same diversity in the bud-spores, or u gonidia,” of Lichens that 
there is in the other groups. There is, however, this difference ; 
the bud-spore of the lower plants consists of a single cell, whereas 
in the Lichens it is made up of several cells : it is an aggregate, 
not a unit. 
In Hepaticse and Mosses the bud-spores are like those of 
Lichens, but more highly-organised. In the case of the Ferns 
and Equiseta there are buds very nearly like those of flowering 
plants, consisting of a number of minute scales, the outer of 
which remain scaly, and ultimately perish ; the inner gradually 
develop into leaves, while the central pimple of cellular tissue 
from which these scales emerge lengthens into a shoot, that 
shoot into a branch, and so on. 
Moreover, that bud, if separated and placed under proper 
conditions, will form a new plant. 
In this way the gardener prepares his cuttings. He takes a 
“ slip ” with a bud attached, places it in moist earth, covers it 
with a bell-glass to prevent undue evaporation, and places it in a 
sufficiently warm locality. After a time the cutting “ strikes,” 
as it is termed ; that is, it forms roots, which roots absorb 
nourishment. The cutting is thus truly a chip of the old block. 
That which the gardener does by art Nature herself often 
does unassisted. Many Begonias form buds from almost any 
portion of their surface, and in prodigious numbers, recalling 
the way in which similar buds are formed on the Mosses, but 
in even greater profusion. Other illustrations may be seen 
in the little bulbs which beset the stalk of the tiger-lily, or 
protrude from the margin of the leaf in Bryophyllum. This 
process of bud formation occurs also, to some extent, in the 
animal kingdom, as among the hydras, but is by no means of 
such general occurrence as in plants. 
Under ordinary circumstances all the buds on any particular 
plant are in all material points alike, and the shoots resulting 
from those buds are also alike. There are differences in size 
and vigour and what not, for no two are precisely alike any 
