618 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SOWING SEEDS. 
plant are totaly changed. Beforetime it had all 
it wanted within itself; food which germination 
cooked and supplied; now it has its own provi- 
sions to seek abroad, and take them in as they 
are, and digest them for itself. It has been 
regularly weaned, and requires more solid food, 
and has a more solid structure to rear for more 
lasting purposes. If we watch the progress of 
its growth, we soon observe that the roots which 
first shoot forth after germination has ceased, 
are quite different in structure and appearance 
from those of the radicals already in the soil. 
Instead of being simply fibrous and smooth, they 
are covered over with numerous fibrils, and are 
more or less ramified, that they push rapidly 
downwards into the soil, far beyond the extent 
to which the stationary radicals have reached ; 
and that upwards into the air blades successively 
spring, borne aloft by an axis of growth or culm 
which appertained in no way to the seedling 
plant. And just also as the soil abounds more 
or less in decaying vegetable and animal matter, 
but particularly in azotised remains, the strength 
and vigour of the culm and blades bear a due 
proportion, more culms shoot out laterally from 
the collet, or life knot, as it has been termed, 
and a fresh number of lateral roots strike off into 
ee 
