OCTOBER. 177 



from evaporating, various details in the process of germina- 

 tion may be noted. 



The first portion of the seed which developes is the 

 rudimentary root or radicle, which bursts out of the 

 enveloping skin and turns downwards to penetrate the 

 soil. It is essential that this should be the first organ 

 produced, because by it the future plant is to be attached 

 to the ground and also the nutriment required by the 

 growing plant is to be absorbed by it. After a time a fine 

 dense felt of most delicate white hair appears towards 

 the growing end of the radicle, and it is through these 

 extremely slender closed tubes that the water filters into 

 the tissues of the plant. Plants have been designated 

 synthetic organisms, in contradistinction to animals which 

 are analytic organisms, for the former feed on water and 

 salts dissolved in it and on carbon dioxide, and from these 

 simple materials they build up their very complex tissues, 

 while animals feed on the highly organised substances 

 produced by plants in the first instance, or by other animals, 

 and reduce them to water and carbon dioxide. All the 

 absorbing parts of roots are covered with these root 

 hairs, but it is not easy to see them unless by growing 

 seeds under the conditions suggested, when they are readily 

 studied. 



After the radicle has elongated into the soil the seed- 

 leaves open out. In regard to all the fovir plants named by 

 me, it is interesting to notice that in the adults the leaves 

 are alternate in their arrangements that is, they are 

 produced singly along the stem, while these first seed- 

 leaves are produced in a pair opposite one another. In 

 peas and beans these first leaves do not fulfil the functions 

 of ordinary leaves that is, absorb carbon dioxide and build 

 up new tissues with evolution of oxygen ; they act only as 

 reservoirs of nutritive materials and yield up to the young 

 growing plant the concentrated food stuff which is stored 

 in them. It must be remembered that the seed is not 

 strictly the new plant or the new generation, though it 

 always contains the embryo. The seed is really a stage in 

 the development of the new generation, when its activities 



