STRUCTURE OF THE PLANT 29 



that form separates itself from the maternal plant. 

 All that lives, be it the simplest plant or man, starts 

 from a single cell. Some microscopic plants and even 

 some that are visible to the naked eye preserve their 

 unicellular condition throughout their life-time ; whereas 

 others as they develop become more complicated in 

 their structure and form two, several, millions of cells 

 out of the original one. 



Thus every plant not only springs from a cell, but 

 consists of cells in all its parts. Cells are, so to speak, 

 the bricks out of which the body of the plant is built. 



This can easily be proved by very simple means. 

 Examine, for instance, a thin slice of a ripe water- 

 melon, and you will see that it consists of bubbles 

 very loosely joined together and having the appear- 

 ance of glass beads. These are cells, which generally 

 lose their mutual coherence in the flesh of a ripe fruit 

 and become detached. In other cases this coher- 

 ence is not broken naturally, but can be broken 

 up artificially. For instance, a slice of raw potato 

 presents a compact body in which it is difficult to per- 

 ceive a definite structure of any kind, without the help 

 of a microscope ; but if you look closely at a boiled 

 potato you will see quite clearly, even with the naked 

 eye, that it consists of separate cells. Boiling water, or 

 rather the action of steam during the process of boiling, 

 has destroyed the coherence between the cells and 

 liberated them. It is somewhat more difficult to 

 separate the cells in more compact organs. But there 

 is no organ too hard to render such a process impossible, 

 were it even a piece of wood, a cherry stone, or the seed 

 of a palm, such as Phytelephas macrocarpa, which is as 

 hard as ivory, and is sometimes used by turners instead 

 of it. To break up the cohesion of cells in such compact 

 bodies we must necessarily seek the help of chemical 

 reagents. 



Jt is not even necessary, however, to destroy the 



