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Functions of Vegetables . 
breaking straight across, and produce only wood. By 
practical gardeners such shoots are called the wood . 
2. In the second kind of branches the base is wrinkled 
and perforated with small holes, the texture is more 
complicated, the vessels more numerous, and the juices 
of greater consistence ; these are the fruit branches ; 
they produce flower-buds, and break clean across when 
they are bent. 3. Another set of branches bear some 
resemblance to the first, but they are less permanent, 
because they have their origin only in the bark ; they 
are denominated branches of spurious wood. 4. In the 
fourth order of branches the base is broad, the bark is 
brownish and rough, their buds are black and thinly 
set; they have their origin in the bark, and are nou- 
rished at the expence of the useful branches ; they push 
out rapidly and have a short duration. 5. The fifth 
kind of branches, which are not particularly character- 
ised, are described as being useless to vigorous trees, 
and injurious to those whose vegetative powers are 
feeble. They draw to themselves a large portion of 
nourishment, and exhaust the vegetable on which they 
exist. 
Buds . — As the trees of tropical regions, where ve- 
getation is never interrupted, are destitute of buds, this 
part of the vegetable structure, in which the rudiments 
of a plant remain in a dormant state, till the influence of 
those agents which produce its evolution commences, is 
a necessary preservative in cold countries. The buds of 
trees and shrubs are formed during the summer in the 
bosoms of the leaves. In their structure and distribu- 
tion they are remarkably uniform in the same species, 
but a great diversity prevails in their situation and forms 
