QUICKENING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS 2g 



It is a matter of natural curiosity among the uniniti- 

 ated why there should be this diversity between the 

 early and later leaves of the plant. These cotyledons 

 are not properly leaves, but storehouses of food, and 

 their office is to nourish the infant plant until its root is 

 sufficiently grown to absorb nourishment from the soil. 



It is not alone in the maple that this pretty masquer- 

 ade is to be seen in the spring woods. The little green 

 things among the dried leaves everywhere are full of 

 interest. Here is the acorn with its determined, rosy, 

 pulsing radicle, making eager head -way towards the 

 mould, while its swelling seed leaves are bursting their 

 bonds. The baby beeches are odd affairs, with the sweet 

 kernel of the former nut now unfolded from its snug 

 quarters, and transformed to its two fan-shaped green 

 nurse leaves with the tiny beech -sprout between them. 



We have all heard of four- leaved, five -leaved, and 

 many-leaved clovers, but it is, perhaps, not generally 

 known that many of the clover tribe start out in life as 

 one-leaved clovers, though they seem quickly to repent. 

 I do not happen to know just which member of the clo- 

 ver family it was that sat for the portrait I have given ; 

 possibly the medic. But there was a whole brood of 

 them, each with its pair of cotyledons, its experimental 

 single leaf, that invariably shrank away, like a wayward 

 child, as far as possible from its outraged younger broth- 

 er that seemed berating it for its degeneracy. 



