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of organism, whether it be a miscroscopic monad or an 

 }£Iephant, a Sequoia, or Man himself, transforming them- 

 selves as they proceed into all the materials required. 

 Arrived at maturity, certain differentiated cells are thrown 

 off whose function it is to perpetuate the race by reproduc- 

 tion, and so the chain of life is continued. Of course, in 

 the vast majority of cases, this function is effected in such 

 a fashion as only the expert scientific biologist can investi- 

 gate, but when we sow a Fern spore — and here we are at 

 once on familiar ground — we start a life chain which is 

 less difficult to follow than most, as in the spore we have 

 a single detached cell, merely provided with a protective 

 husk, as a starting point. This spore lying on the surface 

 of moist loam (we must take this for granted, as we cannot 

 yet see it) will evidence its existence in a week or two by 

 appearing as a tiny green speck. The cell has swollen, 

 burst the husk and protruded, anchoring itself to the soil 

 by a feeding rhyzoid or root hair. It forms at first a short 

 chain of cells by self-multiplication, and then these begin 

 to multiply laterally as well, eventually forming a heart- 

 shaped green scale, from which finally emerges the new 

 generation in the shape of a young Fern. 



The details of this process we have but recently given, 

 and hence need not repeat the point we are arriving at 

 being the difference between the ordinary structural cell, such 

 as the spore contains and of which the entire scale consists, 

 and the reproductive cell, or rather cells, concerned in the 

 sexual reproduction as distinct from mere structure. One 

 of the essential differences between a spore and a seed is 

 that the seed is the result of intersexual action, but the 

 spore is not. Hence at one point in the seed we have a 

 cell which contains the combined potencies of two parents, 

 but not necessarily those of the self-same two from which 

 that self-same cell originated, as cross-fertilization may have 

 occurred. This particular cell, however, in the seed is so 

 associated with a store of nutriment for the young plant as 



