228 
NATURE NOTES 
Then follows the quaint remark, which is indeed a key to the 
whole of the author’s views, “ that botanists are now generally 
agreed that all plants are furnished with organs and parts 
necessary both for chylification and sanguification ; that they 
have both veins, arteries, heart, lungs, adipose, cellules, &c. 
If so it is obvious that there must be some difference between 
the juices which have not undergone the action of those parts, 
and such as have already circulated a number of times.” The 
analogies, or rather homologies, between animals and plants, as 
regards their ultimate histological structure, and as regards 
their fundamental physiological functions, are essential ; and 
their successive recognitions are milestones in the progress of 
science ; but it is well to observe the mystification that may be 
caused when we endeavour to seek for homologies in adaptive 
details. 
Miller returns to the subject of the circulation of the sap ; 
and, as a supposed proof of such circulation, we have an interest- 
ing experiment recorded, the exact significance of which is not 
quite clear, but the phenomenon would seem to be closely related 
to those with which Darwin has made us so well acquainted 
in the famous instances of graft-hybrids ; and these old experi- 
ments are the more interesting since they seem to have a bear- 
ing upon the issues opened up by Weismann’s “ Essays.” We 
are told then that Mr. Fairchild budded the shoot of a yellow- 
spotted passion-tree into a plain-leafed variety, and that the bud 
did not take, yet “ after it had been budded a fortnight the 
yellow spots began to show themselves about three feet above 
the inoculation, and in a little time after that the yellow spots 
appeared on a shoot which came out of the ground from another part 
of the plant.” 
It would appear that this phenomenon — assuming it to be 
accurately reported — is fundamentally an expression of the same 
biological character that we find manifested in graft-hybrids, 
and also in the leaves of Begonia. Several other interesting 
experiments are recorded, as, for instance, the grafting of the 
evergreen oak upon the common oak, and of the (evergreen) 
cedar upon the larch, in both of which cases we are told that, 
while the leaves of the stock fell in the autumn, those of the 
graft remained as usual — an observation which seems to me 
extremely interesting, as showing how the variant inherited 
characters of two species persist under almost identical condi- 
tions of environment. 
We are further assured that this same experimenter exhibited 
before the Royal Society “ a viburnum with its top planted in 
the ground, which was become roots, and the roots turned up, 
which were become branches.” I confess that this would have 
struck me as suspiciously like a Transatlantic narrative, were 
it not for the recent experiments by which Rastowzen and others 
have shown that branches may be converted into roots, both 
physiologically and morphologically. 
