128 Oa the Physiologij of Vegelalles. 



iiulive as to be hardly visible) began in a few hours to swell, and 

 in two days the shoot had run from the heart of the seed; but it 

 was very different from the shoot which leaves the full-grown 

 seed : it was evident that this was not yd formed, that it was 

 merely the heart of the future germ, which contained the little 

 shoot'of leaves and female flowers of that female, which passes 

 from one seed to another, from one plant to another, which is 

 sent up the radicle as a beginning for the 7ietv coagulated seeds, 

 jubt formed from powder, and which serves (I think) not each for 

 a new plant, but for the foundation of each different stripe of 

 flowers which runs up the wood. So direct does this fact ap- 

 pear to me, that I think it almost impossible to doubt it. To 

 me indeed, who had seen the flower coagulate in the end of the 

 radicle, then form into balls and pass through the root, enter 

 and run up the alburnum, pass into the flower- bud, where in a 

 short time it was fructified and its case added — it was impos- 

 sible, after such a series of proofs, to doubt that these balls 

 were seeds ; but by botanists in general, I am told, stronger 

 proofs were demanded : but the growth of the shoot in the 

 heart of the seed must certainly be perfectly convincing. What 

 more can be required ! 



Mr. Baker adds these lines : 



" Each seed includes some plants, those plants agairt 

 Have other seeds, whicli other plants contain; 

 Those other plants lia%f all their seeds, and those 

 ]Mi)re plants again successively inclose. 

 Thus every single heny which wc find 

 Has really in itself whole forests of its kind." 



Now this appears to me to be carrying the evidence far be- 

 yond what the appearance will justify. Mr. Baker had made 

 no preceding dissections that could trace these shoots; and there- 

 fore looked on these diminutive roots found in the husk of the 

 seed, as each a separate plant, or new germ. But I, having be- 

 fore traced them m every part of the vegetalle, cannot think 

 as he did in this respect : they appear to me to be only the 

 means Nature takes to prolong the female flower, from root to 

 root, from seed to seed; and that the seed, with its different 

 roots and its einbryo, serves only as the different parts of one 

 plant, and no n ore ; and I think the following specimen, which 

 I have dissected, of a bean will justify my opinion, (see fig. 3, 

 cut open.) Here the seed eta is retained close to the plant; 

 though the embryo has left it, till the vegetable has enlarged its 

 wood and line of life sufficiently to take in the female flowers 

 which pass through the two holders bb, of the seed aa, and run 

 in stripes into the wood. I give, however, the specimens as ex- 

 actly as I found them : Let every one explain them as they 



please. 



