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Mr. Knight on the Reproduction of Buds. 
buds and leaves. It is also evident, from the facility with 
which the rising sap is tranferred from one side of a wounded 
tree to the other, that the alburnous tubes possess lateral, as 
well as terminal, orifices : and it does not appear improbable 
that the lateral as well as the terminal orifices of the alburnous 
tubes may possess the power to generate central vessels ; 
which vessels evidently feed, if they do not give existence to, 
the reproduced buds and leaves. And therefore, as the pre- 
ceding experiments appear to prove that the buds neither 
spring from the medulla nor the bark, I am much inclined to 
believe that they are generated by central vessels which spring 
from the lateral orifices of the alburnous tubes. The practica- 
bility of propagating some plants from their leaves may seem 
to stand in opposition to this hypothesis ; but the central vessel 
is always a component part of the leaf, and from it the bud 
and young plant probably originate. 
I expected to discover in seeds a similar power to regenerate 
their buds ; for the cotyledons of these, though dissimilar in 
organization, execute the office of the alburnum, and contain a 
similar reservoir of nutriment, and at once supply the place of 
the alburnum and the leaf. But no experiments, which I have 
yet been able to make, have been decisive, owing to the diffi- 
culty of ascertaining the number of buds previously existing 
within the seed. Few, if any, seeds, I have reason to believe, 
contain less than three buds, one only of which, except in 
cases of accident, germinates ; and some seeds appear to con- 
tain a much greater number. The seed of the peach appears 
to be provided with ten or twelve leaves, each of which pro- 
bably covers the rudiment of a bud, and the seeds, like the 
buds of the horse-chesnut, contain all the leaves and apparently 
