88 OSBORNE, ON VEGETABLE GROWTHS. 



coil without disturbing in any way the tube itself. That they 

 exercise considerable pressure upon the tube^ at the points 

 where the coils are close, is quite evident by the extension 

 that they there clearly give to it. 



Although I have failed in every endeavour to make out the 

 existence of spiral fibre in the grain of wheat, in other vege- 

 tables I can clearly trace it, but only in the embryo seed. A 

 very fine section of a young " vegetable marrow/' made so as 

 to pass through the embryo seeds, will show coils of spiral 

 fibre passing from the flesh of the fruit into these seeds ; and 

 at the narrow extremities of each seed, it can with ease be 

 made out with a power of 500. The embryo seeds are, in 

 fact, connected with the fi'uit by a small bundle of this fibre. 

 I believe this to be the case with the wheat, and I have little 

 doubt but that a careful dissection of the attachment of each 

 grain in an ear of such corn, made at the time when the 

 grains are just assuming their form, would prove it. 



I have been much interested by a continued close study of 

 the "double ovate" vesicles to be ever found imbedded in 

 the plasm iyi which, if not froyn which, the root cells of the 

 wheat root are formed. I have the strongest impression that 

 these are the earliest organisms of plant life, so far, at least, 

 as the roots of plants are concerned. I will not now hazard 

 the publication of all the extraordinary features I have ob- 

 served in them ; one, however, not the least extraordinary, I 

 will mention. I have now preparations of the formative 

 matter of the wheat root, sealed hermetically more than six 

 months since, and floating in " Thwaites's fluid," the double 

 ovate cells of which are in as active a motion at this time as 

 they were the day I put them up from the growing root. By 

 the use of the twelfth power B eye-piece, and good light, 

 they may be seen to have taken up the pigment in which I 

 have grown the plants ; indeed, I am now satisfied it is by 

 their close aggregation within the cells of the roots, that I 

 get the rich colour I do, when the plants are grown in 

 coloirred media. The divisions of my micrometer eye-piece, 

 with the twelfth power, as given me by Mr. Ross, are ra-io o 

 (0"000074) . One of these active vesicles will occupy rather 

 more than one of these divisions. The movement of these 

 minute bodies is very different from the molecules of gamboge 

 and other substances ; I have never seen anything the least 

 resembling it, except in preparations 1 have made from pre- 

 pared glasses, exposed for a time to the atmosphere in the 

 early days of summer, when the air is full of spores. 



What life it is I know not, but I believe it to be positively 

 life. 



