344 
MR. FISH’S REJOINDER TO THE EDITOR. 
almost at once become one of your firmest disciples; but it is worse 
than useless to refer me, either by a note of exclamation, or yet an air of 
triumph, to the existence of cambium ; for if cambium, with all its 
organisable qualities, be nothing but an expansion of your favourite 
membrane, then surely we might be able to detect it in some of its 
successive stages, and especially at the interesting period when a sepa¬ 
ration takes place between the liber and the alburnum. 
But, independent of all analogical reasoning, the ever-recurring ques¬ 
tion is, What advantage does your theory confer?—what is its utility? 
In grafting, I was never careful of any other member but the uniting 
of the liber of the scion with the liber of the stock ; and why should 
you laugh at my simplicity, when, according to your own admission, 
your indusium, though united to neither liber nor alburnum, is slightly 
attached to both, especially if I have been fortunate enough to get, 
through ignorance or disbelief, as much of it as suited my purpose, 
while the greatest knowledge, and the firmest belief in its existence, 
would not enable me to get a particle more ? 
You have kindly enough desired to elevate me to soar amid the aerial 
regions, to have my mind expanded and my imagination brightened by 
holding converse with beings of mist and cloud ; but unfortunately you 
have not added a cable’s length to the strong tether which has hitherto 
confined me to this dull clod of earth. Until you have effected this 
favour for me, you must excuse the muddiness of my conceptions, 
tinged as they necessarily must be by the circumstances attending their 
origin. These circumstances may prevent me from perceiving the 
extent of the similarity between the vegetable and animal economy; 
but they do not hinder me from perceiving that the knowledge of the 
one sheds much light upon the other. True, the comparison may be 
carried too far; but this is no reason for making no comparison at all. 
I freely confess, that, mere sciolist as I am in these matters, I dare 
not attempt to prove that bone or muscle is formed from blood. You 
contend that blood and bone are formed simultaneously ; but, allowing 
this to be the case, are you prepared to show that the blood of the parent 
has nothing to do with that formation ? Physiologists inform us that 
the whole of the human frame is completely changed in a very short 
space of time. How can such a thing be accomplished, unless by 
means of the nourishing fluids of the system ? It is a fact, which I 
have often seen recorded, and never questioned, that even the bones of 
animals become of a certain colour when fed upon particular food, and 
that the colour varies according as the food is changed. How is such 
a fact to be accounted for, unless upon the supposition that, after the 
various processes through which the food passes previously to its amal- 
