FRAGILITY OF THE YOUNG PLANT. ADS 
same species, that which most strikes us in the 
comparison is the tender and fragile tissue of 
the one, and the firm, solid, and resisting struc- 
ture of the other. The cause of this difference 
will easily be guessed; it is the formation and 
consolidation of wood in the latter; the young 
plant, on its first emergence, consisting chiefly of 
a delicate unresisting tissue, called by botanists 
the cellular tissue. Were the plant to remain 
in such a condition, that is, wholly made up 
of cellular tissue, it could never become a tree. 
The delicate cells are so feeble, and possess so 
small an amount of the force of cohesion, or 
sticking together, that even granting that the 
plant grew up into a tree, and put out branches, 
the first smart breeze would break off its head, 
and lay the fragile trunk prostrate on the earth. 
But God, who does “all things well,” could 
never have permitted such a flaw in creation; and 
He has therefore appointed means of the most 
beautiful and faultless kind, by which it is so 
contrived that in ordinary cases, so soon as ever 
a plant comes into the broad daylight, imme- 
diately woody tissue begins to be formed. Long, 
though fine bands, of this firm tissue pass from 
