"ON STOPPING TIIE SHOOTS OF FRUIT TREES. 
443 
apricot tree had, in the third year after being planted on a west wall, 
borne a few very fine fruit on the shoots of the former year, and was 
making some very fine promising wood for the next. The tree had few 
or no spurs; and, thinking to increase the flowers on the young shoots 
then in full growth, their points were pinched off soon after Midsum¬ 
mer. The consequence was, every bud on the lower parts of the stopped 
shoots were developed not into flowers, but in short leafy shoots in 
October, to the great chagrin and disappointment of the mismanager. 
A few weaker growing shoots on the same tree which were not stopped, 
produced a few flowers and fruit; but the principal shoots were, with 
very few exceptions, barren. 
From the circumstance of buds being either developed as flowers, or 
as leafy shoots, arises one of the most curious though obscure transfor¬ 
mations in vegetable economy. Monstrous fruit and flowers are 
frequent among highly cultivated plants ; and we often see the axis of 
a shoot prolonged through the centre of a terminal flower, leaving the 
exterior members of the flower behind. This is usually attributed to 
the interference of art deranging the natural processes of organic expan¬ 
sion, and thereby producing imperfect or over-exuberant formation. 
But why are the buds of a luxuriant growing tree almost always 
resolved into shoots, while those of a moderate growing or even a sickly 
one are invariably resolved into flowers and fruit ? This question we 
have elsewhere endeavoured to explain ; but with what success is not 
for us to say. 
Vegetables are often compared to animals in their generation, gra¬ 
dual growth in youth, full stature, and old age. They both require 
nutrition, air, heat, &c., and are affected by all atmospheric influences, 
whether favourable or unfavourable, nearly in the same way. The 
different species of plants, like the different species of animals, have all 
a natural or normal form, composed of a compages of various members 
to complete the individual. Abnormities happen to both : an animal 
or a plant may grow up deformed ; sometimes two embryos are united, 
and hence a double plant, like two seedlings from a double-kernelled 
nut, or fruit, like a twin cherry; and hence a double animal partly, or 
wholly, or separately produced. 1 he different members which compose 
individual plants or animals have each distinct functions, which cannot 
be interchanged so as to act for each other without the direction of sen- 
tie?ice or the manipulations of art. In animals the osseous, muscular, 
nervous, circulating, digestive, and .generative functions, are distinct, 
and cannot take the place, or execute the office, of each other, but in 
very few external movements. The same laws were long considered 
to be applicable to vegetables; but a new light has suddenly dawned 
