220 ESSAYS ON WHEAT 



not perfectly understood, advanced through the general 

 protoplasm of the egg-cell toward the female nucleus situ- 

 ated in its center. The male and the female nuclei, after 

 coming into contact, brought their affinity for one another 

 to a climax by mingling together and forming one whole ; 

 and this nuclear fusion, this formation of a single nucleus 

 from two others of opposite sex, marked the completion of 

 the act of fertilization. We thus see that the train of 

 events which received its impetus from cross-pollination, 

 inevitably led to the production of a cross-fertilized egg- 

 cell. Without fertilization, the egg-cell would have re- 

 mained just as sterile as an unfertilized fowl's egg, and 

 in the end it would have withered and died; but, its 

 fertilization having been accomplished, a most extraordi- 

 nary future was opened to it. Further development be- 

 came irresistible, with the result that, in the course of a 

 few years, its products became in numbers like the stars 

 on a clear night or the grains of yellow sand upon a sea 

 beach. 



The fertilized egg-cell resulting from the physical union 

 of the protoplasm of the Hard Red Calcutta and Red Fife 

 parents could not lie dormant, but, immediately, by cell- 

 division accompanied by nuclear division, began to swell 

 up and become differentiated into distinct parts. Soon it 

 became converted into a definite embryo or rudimentary 

 plant, with a distinct root and a little shoot, lying hidden 

 inside the enlarging ovule and ovary which were now be- 

 coming rapidly converted into a grain of wheat. The 

 tiny embryo, as it grew to its full size, came to be situated 

 on one side of the basal end of the grain. Meanwhile, 

 starch, produced from sugar sent from the leaves, and pro- 

 teins manufactured from nitrogenous compounds, were 

 accumulating in the floury part of the grain which finally 

 came to compose about twenty-four twenty-fifths of its 



