730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



injurious. In the absolute governments of Euroi)e the home is 

 safe whatever else may suffer ; but a system which shall tend to 

 the dissolution of the home is more dangerous than any form of 

 absolutism which at the same time respects the social unit. 



What America needs is not an extension, but a restriction of 

 the suffrage. 



-♦♦♦- 



A LIVING MYSTERY. 



By GEANT ALLEN. 



I HOLD in my hand here a key to one of the greatest mysteries 

 of life — the perennial mystery of birth and reproduction. 



And yet you needn't be in the least afraid that the mystery or 

 its solution involves any technical scientific language, or possesses 

 any tinge of occult abstruseness. It is only a pea that I hold 

 here before me, an ordinary small, round, yellow marrowfat, the 

 seed of the commonest of garden annuals. Nevertheless, that 

 familiar little object, which all of us have known all the days of 

 our life, incloses in itself the entire solution of the riddle of birth. 

 If we understand the pea clearly, we understand the whole science 

 of biology. Let us ask ourselves first, exactly what it is, and 

 then see how it helps us to comprehend the coming into existence 

 of all the higher plants and animals. 



The pea is, in fact, here as it stands, a whole embryo plant 

 in a dormant condition, the product, so to speak, of a distinct mar- 

 riage. More than that, it is a totally new individual, produced by 

 the interaction of separate cells from two pre-existing individual 

 pea-plants. And it is that fact — which it owns in common with 

 every other seed — that gives it illustrative importance as an ex- 

 ample of the mode of production of all higher organisms, animal 

 or vegetable. We may use it to explain this fundamental mystery 

 of advanced life, because the principles which govern its origin 

 and growth are the same as the principles which govern the be- 

 ginning of all other conspicuous plants or animals in the world 

 around us. 



If you bend down a branch of a rose-tree, and cover it with 

 earth, it will take root — make a layer, as we say, and grow up ap- 

 parently into a separate rose-bush. After it has rooted itself 

 firmly in the damp soil, you can cut it off with safety from the 

 mother-plant, and remove it or transplant it to another part of the 

 garden, where it will form, to all outward show, a distinct indi- 

 vidual. Similarly, if you take cuttings from a scarlet geranium, 

 and plant them in pots, you can multiply your original specimens 

 in different places to almost any desired extent. In many cases. 

 Nature has even provided beforehand, as it were, for such purely 



