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be no necessity of perfecting seed, as long as the life of the plant could 
be extended without that exhausting process. Plants are no more prop¬ 
agated artificially by tubers, layers and runners, than they are propa¬ 
gated artificially by seed. The one is just as much a natural process as 
the other. A cutting emits its roots from the amended section, in conse¬ 
quence of its accumulated sap, or the joint action of its accumulated sap 
and leaves, in the same way as a young plant springing from the seed 
emits its roots. The only difference is, that the plant produced from the 
cutting is invariably the hardier and more vigorous of the two. The 
reason is, that it has already acquired hardiness from the parent stem, 
instead of debility and weakness, as the wearing-out theorists contend. 
It is strange that a theory which is so completely at variance with the 
every-day knowledge and experience of mankind, should have found its 
present number of advocates. Every body knows, who knows any thing 
at all on the subject, that a forest of trees reproduced from the suckers, 
or side shoots from the roots, of an old forest previously cleared away 
for that purpose, is not only the most vigorous and rapid of growth, but 
inherits in a great measure the accumulated vigor and hardiness of the 
forest immediately preceding it on the same soil. It is no longer the old 
forest, borne down by the weight of years, and bald with dry antiquity, 
but one of a new and vigorous growth, which soon becomes as indepen¬ 
dent of the parent forest as if it had been produced entirely from seed. 
As soon as the young off-slioot has exhausted the vitality of the old roots, 
it throws down roots of its own and becomes a separate and independent 
tree. It has inherited the wealth of the parent stock, and is enriched 
with the accumulations of a whole line of ancestors. The stump and 
roots of the old tree soon disappear, and after a few years no trace of 
them is left. There is nothing in the new forest out of which to construct 
a hypothesis of progressive degradation. Nature has been active, not in 
perpetuating defects, but in restoring to the offspring the stately trunk 
and giant limbs of the scarred and mutilated parent. Thus, the great 
law of reproduction and restoration, which, in the vegetable world, pre¬ 
serves the integrity of species, is as active and certain as to its results, 
as the law of gravitation in maintaining and perpetuating the motions of 
the heavenly bodies. And one might as well argue, from the occasional 
irregularity of their motions, in favor of a general law of disturbance 
