Page:An introduction to physiological and systematical botany (1st edition).djvu/168

 138 leaves within them, are illustrated by numerous examples. The Abbé de Ramatuelle had taken up this subject with great zeal at Paris, about twenty years ago, but the result of his inquiries has not reached me.

Dr. Darwin, Phytologia, sect. 9, has many acute observations on the physiology of buds, but he appears to draw the analogy too closely between them and the embryo of a seed, or the chick in the egg. By buds indeed, as we well know, plants are propagated, and in that sense each bud is a separate being, or a young plant in itself; but such propagation is only the extension of an individual, and not a reproduction of the species as by seed. Accordingly, all plants increased by buds, cuttings, layers or roots, retain precisely the peculiar qualities of the individual to which they owe their origin. If those qualities differ from what are common to the species, sufficiently to constitute what is called a variety, that variety is perpetuated through all the progeny thus obtained. This fact is exemplified in a thousand instances, none more notorious than the different kinds of Apples, all which are varieties of the common Crab,