THE CELL-STATE. x8 7 



They lay up, till fall, provision in their stems or roots, which does not 

 come into use again until the next spring. And, when the collected 

 capital enters into circulation again after the first warm days, the old 

 cells are not ahle to undertake anew the business of turning it to use. 

 The plant does not put its new wine into old bottles. It forms new 

 cells, new organs, adapted to the demand of the new season. Now 

 those tissues which we may call the procreative tissues come into play. 

 Their cells begin to undergo a continuous division ; their number is 

 multiplied new colonies, new cell-villages are founded. New points 

 are formed at the ends of the roots, the young cells of which suck food 

 from the soil with refreshed vigor ; a new conducting tissue is formed 

 in the stem between the wood and the bark, representing a new yearly 

 ring. A grand act of renovation has also been in preparation at the 

 ends of the limbs and twigs and at the bases of the leaves. Little 

 cones of reproductive tissue are developed at these spots, in which in- 

 numerable cells originate by division, and, in accordance with an innate 

 structural plan, a definite number of vesicles shoot in most symmetrical 

 order of arrangement from each of these cones. Every cone is the 

 beginning of a little stalk, the vesicles that grow from them are the 

 beginnings of leaves ; the whole structure is covered with thick scales 

 and is now called a bud, in which the tender beginnings of leaves are 

 protected by the scales from frost and storm. The buds are started in 

 the summer, completed in the fall ; are dormant during the winter, 

 and are awakened to new life in the spring. The scale-armor now be- 

 comes superfluous, is cast aside ; the little leaves rack and stretch 

 themselves, and joyfully spread themselves out in the air and light ; 

 the little stalk grows longer and longer ; in a little while the buds 

 have shot out into young limbs, in the fresh foliage of which, excited 

 by the light of the sun, the restless labor of the cells begins anew ; 

 or, after a marvelous transformation into flower-stalks, they produce 

 those sexually developed procreative cells which are destined by a 

 series of mysterious processes to found a new cell-state. 



Thus is the cell-state of the plant subject to a continual rejuvena- 

 tion. The individual citizens (the cells) and the villages (the leaves) 

 have but a short life, but the state in its entirety may endure for 

 centuries in lasting youth. If the hands of men, or the elements, do 

 not inflict a violent death, the cell-state, as so many primitive giant 

 trees have shown, may outlast the mightiest kingdoms of men. 



Gifted writers on social politics have recently endeavored to illus- 

 trate the development and interrelations of human society by analogy 

 with a living being and its cells. "We have taken the converse course, 

 and have endeavored to make the life of the plant and its cells com- 

 prehensible by a similitude with a state organization and its citizens. 

 "We have endeavored to show that what man has regarded as the high- 

 est ideal of his conscious effort in the struggles of the world's history 

 has been prefigured in quiet accomplishment in the world of plants. 



