PURPOSE IN ARRANGEMENT. 67 



crude materials and elaborate them for use. For what purpose 

 is the starch garnered up in the potato, and the sugar in the 

 "beet, the carrot and the parsnip ? We shall be told that they 

 are stored up for the plants themselves, to supply the great draft 

 made upon them in producing fruit. We cannot deny it, nor 

 do we wish to do so. We love to contemplate the parent plant 

 providing for every one of the thousand plantlets folded in its 

 seeds, destined to beautify the earth when its own withered stalk 

 has passed away. Would that men might learn a lesson from 

 it, and provide for their offspring enough, and only enough, for 

 their wants till able to provide for themselves. We can hardly 

 help admiring the seeming prudence of the honest beet and 

 parsnip, that industriously gather stores of food the first year 

 for the flowering time, when both root and leaves would fail to 

 supply their wants. In all .these things we have been compelled 

 to recognize a wisdom and a skill that thus arranged this 

 machinery of the plant. 



But in the very arrangement for the plant itself there seems 

 to shine forth a higher and nobler purpose. In the multitude 

 of seeds, an apparent waste of energy, there seems to be a pro- 

 vision for their legitimate destruction by a higher creation. 

 And if the grain of wheat fails to fill unless the germ is there, 

 who does not see that it is better for man that it should be so ? 

 It is best for him that every grain of wheat should represent 

 both so much food, and also a certain centre of new plant life. 

 With what uncertainty would the husbandman sow his field, if 

 perchance only one in a thousand of the precious grains scat- 

 tered on the furrow would give the green blade, and, in time of 

 harvest, the full ear ! He who regards the support of animal 

 life as the highest use of the vegetable kingdom, must also see 

 that certainty of propagation is of prime importance in the 

 plants already mentioned. 



But we have perhaps too far prolonged this discussion on this 

 lower phase of plant-life — the production of food. We readily 

 grant that in the majority of cases the food for animals is pro- 

 duced in a way that seems primarily for the benefit of the plant 

 as an individual or species. To some it may appear to be pre- 

 pared solely for the plant. To this, however, we think there 

 are plain exceptions ; and among them we mention our soft 

 fruits, which are the envelope or mere accompaniment of the 



