SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. i8i 



plants would inevitably die, and the species would 

 become extinct In comparison with the abundant 

 way the young plants of the Oak, etc., are supplied 

 with materials to support them until such time as 

 the radicle can absorb its own mineral 'food from 

 the soil, and the first leaves of the plumule expand 

 to feed on the carbonic acid in the atmosphere, the 

 speedily -developed green seed-lobes of the Mus- 

 tard -and -cress are separated as far asunder as the 

 children of wealthy people sent to Eton and Cam- 

 bridge are from the city arabs who sell fusees in 

 the streets ! Still, one cannot but admire the 

 marvellous power of adaptation in these seedling- 

 plants, unpossessed of much food -store, which enables 

 them in lieu of it at once to gain an honest 

 living in another way. To the young plant it 

 comes to the same thing eventually — whether its 

 seed-lobes contain a legacy of nutritious material, 

 or are endowed with speedy and active vegetative 

 energy instead. 



There is hardly a single department of the life 

 of most kinds of plants where we do not find the 

 laws of political and social economy in operation, 

 and that to a degree which surprises the student 

 of this science, from the human point of view, and 

 furnishes him with many an apt illustration in the 

 prosecution of his researches. 



I have already referred to leaf- buds, and the 

 manner they are protected from frost by those out- 



