27 
into action, and elongates itself whenit is thus most excited ; 
the radicle is stimulated by moisture, and elongates itself 
when #¢ is thus most excited. Whence one of these grows 
upward in quest of its adopted object, and the other down- 
ward.’* Were this account better verified by experiment 
than it is, it only shifts the contrivance. It does not dis- 
prove the contrivance; it only removes it a little farther 
back. Who, to use our author’s own language, ‘adapted 
the objects” Who gave such a quality to these connate 
parts, as to be susceptible of different ‘stimulation; as to 
be ‘excited’ each only by its own element, and precisely 
by that which the success of the vegetation requires? I say, 
‘ which the success of the vegetation requires:’ for the toil 
of the husbandman would have been in vain; his laborious 
and expensive preparation of the ground in vain, if the 
event must, after all, depend upon the position in which the 
scattered seed was sown. Not one seed out of a hundred 
would fall in a right direction.” 
In this passage, there is one little mistake, though it does 
not affect the argument. The green sprout does not issue 
from one end, and the fibrous root from the other, but both 
grow, as in the bean, from the same point. When, however, 
we superficially examine a germinating grain, there is the 
appearance of a double origin of the plume and rootlet, and 
this perhaps is connected with a useful part of the econo- 
my of the process. We saw, that in the growing bean, 
the plumule lies for a certain time inclosed between the 
seed-lobes, and is there safe until it has strength enough 
to bear the contact of the rough mould. Now the husk of 
the grain seems to me to answer, in this respect, the pur- 
Darwin’s Phytologia, p. 144, 
