CHAPTER II 



THE CELL 



THE most remarkable fact in the life of the plant is its 

 growth. When we analyse the phenomenon of growth 

 we realise that it consists in the multiplication of cells. 

 If we examine it still more closely we realise that it 

 involves the appearance and accumulation of matter in 

 places where it was before absent. We put an acorn 

 into the ground and an oak appears ; we drop an 

 imperceptible grain of dust, a spore, and a tree-like fern 

 springs up. The question naturally arises : whence 

 came this substance ? Evidently this question pre- 

 supposes the conviction that matter cannot be newly 

 created, nor disappear. This law of the non-disappear- 

 ance, or the conservation, of matter underlies all 

 scientific conceptions of Nature. The ancients ad- 

 mitted that ex nihilo nil fit, but they would certainly have 

 been in a sore quandary had they been asked, for 

 instance, to prove that burnt matter has not ceased to 

 exist, or to decide whence comes the substance of the 

 plant. Only by long-continued and laborious experi- 

 menting could the law of the conservation of matter 

 as applied to the phenomena of plant life be demon- 

 strated. Even in these days people unfamiliar with the 

 results of science still believe that the growing substance 

 of the plant is derived from the soil, whereas the error 

 of this theory was proved more than three hundred 

 years ago. Van-Helmont, one of the forerunners of the 

 scientific epoch of Natural Science, one of those clear and 

 fearless minds who steered the way for positive science 

 notwithstanding the hampering snares of scholastic 



