FIRST GROWTH OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT. 41 



wliile the gluten clmnges into albumen, and both together 

 form protoplastem (Naegeh's organic food elements), or the 

 food of the cell. The fluidity of the new body enables 

 it to find its way to the places where the formation of 

 cells is going on. The amylimi supplies the elements 

 required to form the outer wall of the cell ; the nitro- 

 genous matter constitutes a principal ingredient of the 

 cell contents. Simultaneously with the roots and leaves, 

 small leaf-buds arise upwards on the stem-joint, and small 

 root-buds appear at the basis of the roots. 



In the protoplastem of the wheat-plant the non-nitro- 

 genous matter exceeds the azotised matter as five to one. 



Except water and oxygen, no substance from without 

 takes any part in these processes. Wliat the seed loses in 

 carbon by the formation of carbonic acid in germination 

 is afterwards recovered almost entirely by the young 

 plant. 



The plant developed under these circumstances barely 

 increases in substance to any appreciable degree, even 

 though it may continue vegetating for weeks. The organs 

 developed from a grain of wheat weigh all together, when 

 dried, no more than the grain did before germination. 

 The relative proportion of the non-nitrogenous and 

 azotised substances in them is almost the same as in the 

 farinaceous body, the constituents of which have in reahty 

 merely assumed other forms. The leaves, roots, stem, 

 leaf-buds and root-buds collectively represent the con- 

 stituent parts of the seed, transformed into organs and 

 apparatus now endued with the power of performing 

 certain operations which serve to carry on a chemical 

 process, whereby external inorganic substances, with the 

 cooperation of sunhght, are converted into products analo- 

 gous in all their properties to tlie materials from whicli 

 these organs themselves arose. 



