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PHYSIOLOGICAL BOTANY.

tion and its peculiar normal functions, so will also theindividuals produced by it, and by all those which followit, and which possess their own separately, i. e. modifiedaccording to the stages of their development and theirage, the second being directly and constantly grafted uponthe first; the third upon the second, and so on, each onebeing grafted upon the other. The first individual, theembryo, derives the principles of its existence from without,from water, air, light and heat, but especially from thealbuminous body (perisperm), when it is present, whichnourishes the embryo, and is thus absorbed; the secondis nourished by the first; the third by the second andthe first, and the fourth by the three others, as well as bythe elements previously named; hence it follows, thatwhen the phytons are perfectly developed, the first re-mains very weak ; the second is somewhat stronger; thethird is still stronger; and that all the subsequent onesbecome stronger and stronger, as also more complicatedin form, and consequently in functions, until we arrive atthe normal leaf, which has attained the highest stage oforganization.”

Gaudichaud says, all botanists now know that the em-bryo is a bud, whence it may be readily deduced, thatthe bud is just the same as the embryo, and must haveroots like it. But this is not the case, the embryo is nota bud, nor the bud an embryo. There is an old andevery-day observation, which I am accustomed briefly toexplain in the following manner: the embryo—producedby impregnation—propagates the species; the bud, theindividual. A branch with buds, from a Borsdorf apple-tree, when grafted always produces Borsdorf apples,whilst the seed of a Borsdorf apple never does so. Dif-fering in this important property, it may also differ inother respects, hence it does not follow that the budshould have roots like the embryo. Moreover, the leaf isnot an individual, it is only such when united with thebuds, and these at first contain only cellular tissue,extremely few spiral vessels. Such buds, when unitedtogether, form Mirbel’s Phyllophore.