262 Mr. Knight on the Reproduction of Buds. 
all the buds of the succeeding year : and I have never been 
able to satisfy myself that all the buds were eradicated without 
having destroyed the base of the plumule, in which the power 
of reproducing buds probably resides, if such power exists. 
Nature appears to have denied to annual and biennial plants 
(at least to those which have been the subjects of my experi- 
ments) the power which it has given to perennial plants to 
reproduce their buds ; but nevertheless some biennials possess, 
under peculiar circumstances, a very singular resource, when 
all their buds have been destroyed. A turnip, bred between 
the English and Swedish variety, from which I had cut off the 
greater part of its fruit-stalks, and of which all the buds had 
been destroyed, remained some weeks in an apparently dor- 
mant state ; after which the first seed in each pod germinated, 
and bursting the seed-vessel, seemed to execute the office of a 
bud and leaves to the parent plant, during the short remaining 
term of its existence, when its preternatural foliage perished 
with it. Whether this property be possessed by other biennial 
plants in common with the turnip or not, I am not at present 
in possession of facts to decide, not having made precisely the 
same experiment on any other plant. 
I will take this opportunity to correct an inference that I 
have drawn in a former Paper,* which the facts ( though quite 
correctly stated ) do not, on subsequent repetition of the ex- 
periment, appear to justify. I have stated, that when a per- 
pendicular shoot of the vine was inverted to a depending 
position, and a portion of its bark between two circular incisions 
round the stem removed, much more new wood was generated 
on the lower lip of the wound become uppermost by the 
* Phil. Trans of 1803. 
