Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/85

 In the propagation of animals, we can obtain a succession of offspring produced only according to the usual course of nature; because, an animal forms a whole, whose parts cannot retain life, when, separated from each other. The less complex, and less elaborate organization of vegetables, admits of other modes of propagation; and a detached part of each individual, is capable of forming a plant in every respect similar to that from which it was taken, and possessed of all its powers and properties. Vegetable, however, like animal life, in individuals, appears to have its limits fixed by nature, and immortality has alike been denied to the oak, and to the mushroom; to the being of a few days, and of as many centuries. The general law of nature must be obeyed, and each must yield its place to a successor. The art of the planter readily divides a single tree into almost any number that he wishes, but the character of the new trees, thus raised, is very essentially different from that of a young seedling plant; they possess a preternatural maturity, and retain the habits and diseases of the tree, of which they naturally formed a part. All efforts, which have hitherto been made to propagate healthy trees, of those varieties which have been long in cultivation, have, I believe, been entirely unsuc-