The reader is again referred to the branch on page 31, which we must remind him was copied from Nature. The maximum of ramifying power on the main axis of this branch appears to be about the middle, and is seen in the first branch immediately below the bud-traces, marked '54, or the fourth branch from the bottom. This branch is fifteen inches in length. The tenth branch, just under the bud-trace marked 1857, exhibits the minimum of ramifying power, or a growth of only eight lines. It will be seen that the difference of growth amongst the other branches in like manner bears a determinate relative connection with their several positions on the main axis of the branch.

It is very seldom, therefore, that all the axillary buds of an axis are developed. Most frequently the majority of them are suppressed, and this, too, according to a fixed and regular law. In most cases, neither in the axilla of the covering leaves, nor in that of the under leaves, vitally active buds are produced, but only in the leaf-angles of the upper and more powerfully developed part of the year's shoot. Yet this rule is not without exceptions. In the Judas tree (Cercis Canadensis), the maximum of productive power is certainly in the under part of the shoot; the leafaxilla have duplicate buds in the lower part of the shoot, whilst toward its top the axilla of the leaves are sterile.

Sometimes the buds which have thus been rendered rudimentary, retain a sufficient amount of vital activity to carry them forward through the annually deposited layers of wood and bark, so that they continue to maintain their position, year after year, on the outside of the bark, where they remain ready for action, in case the growth of the other buds is checked by untimely frosts or other causes. The disintegration of the bark, which is perpetually going on in old stems, undoubtedly helps to keep them on the surface. But in the majority of instances, the bud either dies, and is detached from the shoot the first year, or it retains its life, but continues totally inactive. In the latter case, it necessarily sinks below the surface of the stem, and becomes buried beneath the succeeding annual deposits of bark and wood. Here it may remain for years, in a state

of passive vitality, entombed in the stem of the tree, like a seed which is buried in the ground. The trunks and branches of trees always contain an immense number of these buried buds. The Beech branch figured on page 31 of this work, may be again referred to; for it furnishes an excellent illustration of this truth. We have proved it to have been constructed by the labors of one hundred and fifty-five leaves, each of which formed, more or less perfectly, a bud in its axilla, before it fell from the stem; yet only twenty-seven of these leaves developed vitally active buds-therefore, the total number of abortive or rudimentary buds in the branch must be 155—27–128.

The reader will remember that this branch is only six years old, and is a mere twig, comparatively speaking. The length of the primary axis is but twenty-seven inches and three lines, and of its greatest secondary axis fifteen inches. How countless, therefore, must be the number of rudimentary buds in powerful branches, which have been growing for centuries! Each generation of leaves, whose labors. brought those branches to their present strength and size, doubtless left behind them buds which now lie concealed in them. The vitality of those buds is not destroyed. Their parent leaves, it may be, have died, and dropped from the tree many years ago; but they still retain, unimpaired, the life which they then received. It is only necessary for them to be placed in circumstances favorable to their growth, to commence the most energetic life-movements. Let some of the leading branches be broken off by the high winds of Winter, and when Spring comes, they will attract the sap which went to those branches to themselves. This will arouse their dormant energies; and so powerful will be the impulse received, that they will force their way through the wood and bark to the surface, and break forth into branches, although that wood and bark may be the growth of years. All must be familiar with the sight of willows and other trees, whose main branches have been thus broken off, and whose trunks are nevertheless covered with young branches and shoots, the growth of buds which have been buried in their wood, and for years dormant beneath their surface.

It is necessary, however, here to make some qualifying observations. Every plant possesses a power of forming buds out of any of its cells, when these cells are placed in suitable conditions. Now, although the normal position of a bud is either at the summit of a shoot, or in the axilla of a leaf, yet buds are frequently found also developing from other parts, such as the leaves and roots; and not unfrequently in the case of trees, where the branches have been pollarded, or cut away, from the cells of the cambium region. It is a fact well known to gardeners, that under the influence of heat and moisture, the leaves of Bryophyllum calycinum, Gloxinia, Gesneria, &c., may be made to produce buds; and the production of buds on true roots has been frequently observed in Pyrus Japonica, Maclura aurantiaca, and Paulonia imperialis. Portions of the roots of these plants, in a healthy condition, may be made to produce new plants. Hence, in the case of willows and other trees, whose tops have been removed, "it is not always easy to decide, without dissection, whether the buds are really adventitious, or merely latent axillary buds stimulated into development."*

Buds are always formed from the cellular portion of the stem, and in normal cases they may be distinctly traced on young branches to the pith or medullary rays. This fact is illustrated by the dark lines drawn through the centre of the conical ramifications of the diagram on page 59, which represents the pith in the centre of the branch and its branchlets, and shows its connection with their buds or developing points. In those cases where a bud has been formed by a leaf which has died years ago, and has maintained its position on the exterior bark in a latent condition, if a section be made at the point of the stem where it is seen to protrude, the vegetative course of the bud will be marked by a line of pith called the wake of the bud, which traverses the several layers from the centre outward.† It follows from this, that branches of the same age may have

* An Elementary Course of Botany, Structural, Physiological, and Systematic, by ARTHUR HENFEY, page 69.

† See article "Botany," in Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia.

originated from buds which have been formed at different periods of the life of the tree. Hence, as growth progresses, and the successive conical layers accumulate year after year around the stem and its branches, the original points of development from whence the first vitally active buds proceeded, become deeply seated in the interior of the stem; for the wood of the principal branches of the tree which usually developes from the earliest vitally active buds, can be traced through the successive annual layers down to these original points. This is the cause of those knots which we find in firs and other wood. They are in fact sections across a portion of the branches, which proceed from the interior of the stem, laterally and outwardly. The diagram on page 59, if carefully studied awhile, will also make this fact plain.

But the abundant supply of food existing in the cells of the cambium region of the healthy trunks of trees which have been pollarded, will also stimulate to "unusual activity the cambium cells;" and if there is no wake visible on dissection, it may be decided that the branches have been developed from cells which have originated there, as "vents for the extraordinary vital energy of the plant."*

In society, as in a tree, there is a vast amount of dormant ability, which would manifest itself if circumstances were favorable. So, when a nation is decimated by disease, or depopulated by war, its arts and sciences revive, its poets and philosophers, its statesmen and heroes, are all reproduced. Dormant talent is developed to replace that which has been removed. Men who would have passed through life without notice, fulfilling its ordinary routine of duties in their several callings and professions, become suddenly stimulated to exert themselves. The conditions have become more favorable for their development; their intellectual and moral energies are called forth by the new circumstances in which they find themselves placed, and they prove themselves equal to the performance of the several tasks which have been allotted to them. Their talents are as conspicuous and as highly honored by the

*Henfey's Elementary Course of Botany, page 578.

community, as those of their predecessors, by the remembrance of whose deeds they are stimulated. Thus death becomes the source of life-nations revive again.

Owing to the imperfect state of our present civilization, the intellectual and moral powers of our nature are unfolded only in a few of our fellow-men, and these few, preeminent for high station and brilliant attainments, are being all the time brought before our notice. These privileged and favored individuals attract universal attention, and in the excess of our admiration we are apt to imagine a great gulf fixed between them and the rest of their race. But it not unfrequently happens that these great men, so conspicuous and illustrious, have had, from the very first start in life, every advantage of education and elevated social position. If so, properly regarded, they should unite us more closely to the multitude of men; for the light which shines in them, shows clearly powers and capabilities now slumbering in thousands around us, awaiting but the influence of favoring circumstances to become manifest.

The starveling shoot only requires sunshine and sap to become a powerful branch; and every poor merchant- and tradesman feels his want of capital, and how he could push and extend his business, if he only had the means to do so. How frequently amongst the trees of a forest, does it happen that a powerful branch, rich in sap and sunlight, with its numberless branchlets and leaves all at work in the air, is swept away by a storm, and then the current of sap which it monopolized goes to the starveling shoots; some of them, under its influence, become branches as powerful and luxuriant as that which was removed, and the injury done the tree is thus completely effaced.

It is precisely the same in the social world. Persons now in easy circumstances, well remember the time when they were starveling shoots. Did you not for years bravely battle with the world under every possible disadvantage? You gathered energy and nerve from repeated conflicts, and at last a chance presented itself; and then, in the popular but expressive language of the day, you went