2 INDIVIDUSAEITY SÉCT: 2
in the earth with a glafs cup inverted over it, to prevent the exhala- tion from being at firit greater than its power of abforption; orifit be inferted into the bark of another tree, it will grow, and become à plant in everÿ refpect like its parent. This evinces that every bud of a tree 15 an individual vegetable being; and that a tree therefore is a family or{warm of individual plants, like the polypus, with its young growing out of its fides, or like the branching cells of the coral-infeét.|
The prefent moft approved method of propagating vines in hot- houfes confifts in cutting off a fingle eye of a vine-ftalk with about
an inch of the ftem above the eye, and two or three inches below
it; and fetting this aflant in the bark-bed with the eye about an inch or lefs beneath the furface, pointing upwards; and! have feen a quick- fet or hawthorn hedge, cretægus, propagated in the fame manner by planting twigs in the ground with one bud only above the foil,
Mr. Barns, in a treatife on Propagating Fruit-trees(1759, Bald- win, London) afferts, that he cut a branch into as many pieces, as there were buds or leaves upon it; and wiping the two wounded ends dry, he quickly applied to each a cement previoufly warmed, which confifted chiefly of pitch, and planted them in the earth with unfailing fuccefs. The ufe of this cement I fufpeét to confift in its preventins the bud from bleeding to death, though the author afcribes it toits antifeptic quality. And laftly, in the inoculation and ingraft- ing of fruit-trees, five or fix different kinds of pears are frequently feen où the branches of one tree, which could not then properly be termed an individual being.
2. When old oaks, or willows, lofe by decay almoft all their folid internal wood, it frequentiy happens, that a part of the fhell of the ftem continues to flourifh with à few healthy branches. Whenceit appears, that no part of the tree is alive but the buds, and the bark, and the roct-fibres; that the bark is only an intertexture of the cau-
dexes