404 On the Physiology of Vegelalles. 



distinguished. BB, where the powder forms into balls, Still co- 

 Inured. CC, where the female or flower first enters the radicle 

 from the root and old seed, and breaking off into shoots or sepa- 

 rate germs tlioy are drawn within the seeds. DD, apart where 

 the pollen appears to l)p collected. The hall when first formed 

 at A.A, then consists of the heart of the seed only, composed of 

 an empty bladder, and a shoot below it; the vacunm is the 

 part of the corcalum which is first filled up, when the heart is 

 fructified, and brought from the root; and the shoot is certainly 

 the origin of the primordial branch, which reaches down from 

 under the layers which form the embryo, and which when the 

 embryo is completed runs under, to spread all over the interior 

 surrounding jiart. When tlie seed is once fixed in the earth, it 

 serves as a basis for tb.e stripes of flov^ers in the wood, and as a" 

 commencement of those which entered the radicle*. But when 

 the new-fi)rmed seeds are thus finished, they rise from the root, 

 pass through the alburnum ; it is then the flowers "of the pre- 

 ceding year that enter the jlower-hud. It is the festoons and 

 bouquets that are alone forward enough to complete them- 

 selves, and rise up by the simple growth of their several pedun- 

 cles, and burst into light and beauty. No tree, therefore, could 

 flower the Jirst year ; and in ainiual and herbaceous plants, sea- 

 sons must stand in lieu of years. It is by means of the com- 

 parison of one part of the formation of plants we must 

 judge of another. This is curiously exemplified in another case, 

 as in the cabbage and many vegetables, whose yearly row of 

 wood (instead of increasing each year) forms a new specimen 

 each seaso7i. This may be the same with the stripes and bou- 

 quets. Besides, in quicker-growing plants I much doubt whether 

 this arrangement is not wholly managed by climate : at any 

 rate the female flower as well as the line of life is the prolonga- 

 tion of vital power ; and the quantity of matter I have seen 

 flow into the seeds at the time of the corolla passing off, and 

 which I have often mentioned with astonishment, is 71010 most 

 admirably accounted fi)r, as most probably forming the innume- 

 rable new shoots of flowers in each se|)arate bladder, surrounding 

 the embryo of the seeds just friiciificd. Vegetables as well as 

 animal bodies can convert the juices of the atmosphere into 

 their own .substance, and thus augment the number of their 

 component particles. This oj)eration is certainly as constant as 



* Tliis itulced mny he another rcasnn why the seed is so hxig ,-ittnched 

 to the embryo and growing plant, not being severed by Nature till the 

 germ has fixed its stripes in the wood of the nrw tree, and till the floweis 

 have descended into the new radicles to enter the ncw-iuade seeds.-:— What 

 ex<juisite contrivance ! what admirable iiiveutioii .' 



the 



