58 SEEDS, THEIR STRUCTintE AND FUNCTIONS. 



the most common is the P. cceruleum, a neat, hardy perennial, with pinnate 

 leaves and clear blue flowers. A recent introduction, the Cyananthus hiatus, a 

 plant greatly resembling the Polemoniums, also belongs to this order. One inter- 

 esting plant, formerly included with the Gilias, deserves to be more extensively 

 grown — we allude to the Ipomopsis picta, the Gilia coronopifolia of some Botanists. 

 It is a tall biennial, with finely cut leaves, and scarlet blossoms spotted with 

 purple. It requires to be sown in the borders in summer, and afterwards trans- 

 ferred to pots, and preserved from frost through the winter, during which period 

 but little water should be given it, as it is very liable to damp off. The following 

 season it may be shifted to a large pot for flowering, or turned into the open border. 

 It is worthy of remark, that most of the Polemoniads have Hue pollen, whatever 

 may be the colour of the flowers ; to this, however, the Phloxes are an exception. 



SEEDS, THEIR STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS. 



Among the teeming wonders of our beautiful world, few are more calculated to 

 strike the reflective mind with astonishment than the means provided for the 

 multiplication and dissemination of the various members of the Vegetable Kingdom. 

 "Whether we consider only the structure and reproductive office of the marvellous 

 organisms by whose agency these ends are effected ; the simplicity of the means 

 by which their diffusion is accomplished ; the multifarious purposes to which they, 

 or their products, are applied, in augmenting the comforts and luxuries, and 

 diminishing the wants and miseries of mankind ; or, finally, the deeply interesting 

 moral associations connected with their functions, it will be readily conceded that 

 no vegetable organ more displays the power, benevolence, and matchless wisdom 

 of the Great Creator, than the apparently insignificant bodies containing the 

 rudiments of a future plant. Deferring until a future number any notice of the 

 successive stages through which the ovule, or immature seed, passes, while attached 

 to the parent plant, we will, in the present paper, confine our observations to the 

 ripened seed, in the state in which it falls from the seed-vessel. 



Every seed consists essentially of a nucleus or kernel, surrounded by one or more 

 integuments. In the young ovule, these integuments are several in number, some 

 botanical writers enumerating as many as five ; but as the seed progresses to 

 maturity part of these are absorbed, so that, in the ripe seed, all that can be 

 detected is the nucleus and two coverings, generally easily separable from each 

 other. These two membranes, which may be seen to advantage in the Walnut, 

 are named, the outer one the episperm or testa, and the inner one the endopleura 

 (en-don, within, and pleura, side). Collectively they form the spermoderm (from 

 sperma, seed, and derma, a covering). 



