270 
A very important question naturally suggests itself here, and that is, 
whether it is necessary that a plant should be generated by an actual im¬ 
pregnation in order to propagate its life beyond what is called its ‘deter¬ 
minate period;’ in other words, whether there must be a reproduction from 
a germ, obtained under the sexual system, in order to realize an entirely 
new plant ? Whether impregnation is such an immutable law of nature, 
as to subject all forms of life, and all organized matter, to its necessity ? 
If so, what shall we say of the sporules of the cryptogamia and the re¬ 
productive organs of the asexual plants. These are multiplied without 
the aid of sexual intercourse. They have, in fact, no definite and prede¬ 
termined points of growth ; but the young plant springs forth from the 
surface of the parent stem as naturally, and with the same apparent eager¬ 
ness of vitality, as the new blade of couch grass springs from the runner 
of the old. 
Buds and bulbs are the viviparous offspring of vegetables, furnished 
with placental vessels which answer the purposes of nourishment till they 
acquire lungs, or leaves, for the elaboration of their nutritive fluids, the 
same as seeds are the oviparous offspring of their respective plants. 
Thus, vegetables have two methods of propagating themselves, both of 
which are strictly in accordance with the known laws and operations of 
nature, as exhibited even in the animal kingdom ; the oviparous method, 
or the propagation by seed, and the viviparous, or the propagation by 
buds an dbulbs. The annual production of a plant from a bulb or bud, is 
no more wonderful than that of many kinds of insects, which perish in 
the autumn, after producing an embryon. The bud or bulb is in fact the 
hybernacle of the future plant, the same as the embryon of an insect, 
which lies torpid in winter, and developes itself the succeeding spring or 
summer. It was this resemblance, no doubt, which led Linnaeus to call 
the buds and bulbs the winter-lodges, or hybernacula of the plant. Many 
plants are known to be both oviparous and viviparous, and there is a very 
extraordinary instance of this double method of propagation in the ani¬ 
mal kingdom ; the same species of aphis being viviparous in summer, 
and oviparous in autumn. 
It is said that many of the alpine grasses, whose seeds are perpetually 
destroyed by birds, frequently become viviparous; bearing roots or bulbs 
instead of seed, which, falling off, take root, and thus continue the life- 
