A LIVING MYSTERY. 733 



to tlie ripe stigma or sensitive surface of number two's undevel- 

 oped pod. So much alone we can see for ourselves with the un- 

 aided eye of outer observation. How much more of the history 

 of this matter will dissection and the microscope finally tell us ? 



Inside the keel or lower petal of the pea the young pod pushes 

 out its style and brush-like stigma to meet the advances of the 

 fertilizing bee. On the end of the style, at the inner surface, a 

 group of delicate hairs protrudes from the stigma ; and it is on 

 these hairs that the bee casually and almost accidentally (so far as 

 he is concerned) deposits the pollen-grains he has carried off from 

 the brother-blossom. Forthwith, each pollen-grain, meeting with 

 the sensitive surface of a sister-style, and recognizing its position, 

 begins to emit a tube of highly vital matter, which bursts out from 

 its side and seeks a vent to penetrate the pod in the exact center of 

 the neighboring flower. Now the hairs, on whose tip the pollen- 

 grain has been deposited, are tubular and hollow ; and the pollen- 

 tubes, running down the style along these pre-established routes, 

 soon reach the little ovules, or undeveloped peas, that lie concealed 

 in the pod within. There it is that the actual, intimate work of 

 fertilization itself really takes place. The vital material of plant 

 number one, laid by in the pollen, enters and mixes with the vital 

 material of plant number two, laid by in the ovule ; and from their 

 intermixture and union, in the most physical sense, there springs 

 at last the wonderful little object I see before me — the pea itself, 

 a dormant plantlet, waiting only for heat and moisture to wake 

 it into life, that it may grow into a new and separate individual 

 pea-vine. 



Now, note the importance of this act of fertilization. Unless 

 the pollen had reached the ovules in the undeveloped pod, the 

 tiny peas therein contained would never have swollen or devel- 

 oped into perfect seeds at all. The flower in that case would have 

 withered on its stalk, and the pod would have dried up to an 

 abortive and shriveled mass of empty membrane. It was the 

 union of the pollen of one plant with the ovules of another that 

 produced this entirely new individual, a compound and outgrowth, 

 not of one but of two distinct pre-existing organisms. The vital 

 material inside the bee is the vital material of the one, re-enforced 

 and vivified by the diverse vital material of the other. 



In order to understand the use and object of this peculiar pro- 

 vision of Nature, whereby every higher plant or animal is the 

 product of two prior individuals whom we call its parents, we 

 must look first more closely at the phenomena of ordinary vege- 

 tative growth, and thus see wherein this higher mode of repro- 

 duction differs essentially from that simpler and lower function. 



All plants (roughly speaking) can produce from certain parts 

 01 themselves new leaves and branches ; and each such leaf, from 



