ANNUAL MEETING AT NEVADA. 185 



came he found food of vegetables and of flesh ; but the agent that 

 brought all this was the little leaf. 



And what is this leaf, this very little thing that hath wrought such 

 wonders and done so much to give character to a planet ? 



THE STARTING POINT 



In all our vegetation is the seed. An invisible atom of pollen finds its 

 right place in a flower and the results a seed, perhaps within an apple or 

 an orange, perhaps shut in a pod as a bean or a locust, or a husk like 

 wheat or corn. But be it this or that, the seed has its coatings, its 

 cells, starch, gluten, diastase, coloring matter and a germ. It has also its 

 definite character. From one kind of seeds men make strychnine, from 

 others bread, while from still others are developed many useful articles. 

 The same seed may give us food, or it can be changed into the much 

 abused alcohol. 



The seed of a Lima bean is much larger than the seed of the great 

 redwood of California ; but the bean produces a plant which at its heavi- 

 est only weighs a few ounces, while the smaller seed grows into a tree 

 that will load a hundred wagons. 



Men do not plant the seed of jimpson expecting to raise peaches, 

 nor expect to produce figs from thistles. 



The germ within the seed has its chemical character, but neither 

 eye nor instrument, nor chemical process can tell us what it will bring 

 forth. If we know not what it is, we must bury it in the soil and wait 

 to see. 



THE NEXT STEP 



in the life of vegetation is the bud, and this may be developed from the 

 bark of many plants as well as from the seed. Cut off at the 

 stump almost any of the trees or shrubs ; it looks hopeless, as though it 

 could not live again ; but out of its own substance the snag that appears 

 so dead organizes a bud, and from out its bark or from a root under the 

 soil pushes a new growth. This December day on twigs that cannot 

 be numbered, all over our own Missouri are the buds for another year's 

 leaves and fruits and flowers. The embryo is folded carefully at the 

 center, the scales are wrapped around it in nature's perfect style of plac- 

 ing, and the water is shut out by the wax that cements its parts together. 

 The cold will not kill them nor the wind tear them to pieces ; and 

 when the spring time has breathed upon them, their scales will loosen, 

 action will begin, the germ will expand, and the new born leaves, lo\ely 



