CHAPTER XIV 



THE ORDERLY CYCLES PURSUED IN GROWTH, AND 

 THE REMARKABLE RESULTS OF DISTURBANCE 

 THEREOF 



Growth: structural 



HE reader may possibly wonder, as he contemplates the 

 chapter before him, what reason there is for its separa- 

 tion from the one that precedes it, when both are con- 

 cerned with the very same subject and closely inter- 

 connected. So I may as well make the confession that it has not a 

 much better basis than the reason assigned by an early French 

 naturalist for excluding the Crocodiles from Insects, — the animal 

 seemed to belong there, but would make quite too terrible an 

 insect! I like to conceive of this book as read one chapter at a 

 sitting by a reader who has interest enough in the subject to make 

 its careful perusal the chief feature of an evening's business; and 

 so much must be said about growth that it cannot be followed 

 unweariedly without some kind of division or intermission. 

 However, the matter is really not quite so desperate as this, for 

 the physiological and structural phenomena of growth are in fact 

 sufficiently different to make a division between them not wholly 

 unnatural. 



Of the structural phenomena of growth, the most striking and 

 important are concerned with the cycle of development of the 

 individual plant from its very first origin up to its adult condition; 

 and this is comprised in four stages. 



1. The Growth Cycle; from Egg-cell to Embryo. — This stage 

 is rather well represented, albeit somewhat diagrammatically, by 



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