66 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



embrace in all particulars. There are also some plants so valu- 

 able for several purposes that it would be difficult to determine 

 in every case the leading idea. They are made for a double 

 purpose, and may develop in either direction. The apple-tree 

 with double blossoms, or the tomato with tubers upon it, would 

 not, therefore, with any candid person, affect the bearing of the 

 propositions. If a law of nature is really discovered, all excep- 

 tions arc either merely apparent, or if real, are found to be 

 special provisions for some wise purpose. It is the general law 

 of variation that we now wish to present for consideration in 

 the propositions just enunciated. If these propositions have 

 any significance, to what do they tend ? Certainly to show that 

 the vegetable kingdom is not an end to itself. Men and animals 

 do not make use of plants because they happen to be what they 

 are ; but the plants are constituted as they are for the sake of 

 the animal kingdom, and many of them with direct reference to 

 man as an intellectual and moral being. It is by the law of 

 variation of species that they are most perfectly fitted for these 

 high purposes. 



In almost every department of plant life the changes can be 

 referred primarily to the good of the plant itself ; and thus it is 

 easy to say, and no doubt easy for some to believe, that there is 

 in them no purpose other than the continuance of the species, 

 if any purpose at all. The cereals — wheat, rye, barley, Indian 

 corn and rice — furnish the great bulk of food for the human 

 race. We have no doubt that most men will believe that they 

 were made for this purpose, and not that they happened to be 

 what they arc, or that the primary object in importance was that 

 they might propagate their kind, and that the support of animal 

 life was no part of the plan, but accidental or subsidiary. 



Yet there is much that seems to favor the theory that all the 

 machinery of fruiting is for the continuance of the species 

 alone. If the germ fails to be fertilized by the pollen, no sugar 

 nor starch nor gluten is stored up in the seed for man. But 

 when the pollen has touched the germ, there is power of inde- 

 pendent life, and from that moment all the energies of the plant 

 are taxed to store the kernel with food. But food for what ? for 

 whom ? For the young plant, all agree. It puts in the seed 

 the food which that germ needs for its support, till its roots and 

 leaves are large enough to collect from the earth and air the 



