Certainty of Propagation. 167 



deny it, nor do we wish to do so. We love to con- 

 template the parent plant providing for every one 

 of the thousand plantlets folded in its seeds, des- 

 tined to beautify the earth when its own withered 

 stalk has passed away. Would that men might learn 

 a lesson from it, and provide for their offspring 

 enough, and only enough, for their wants till able 

 to provide for themselves. We can hardly help ad- 

 miring the seeming prudence of the honest beet and 

 parsnip, that industriously gather stores of food the 

 first year for the flowering time, when both root and 

 leaves would fail to supply their wants. In all these 

 things we have been compelled to recognise a \, 

 dom and a skill that thus arranged the machinery 

 of the plant. 



lUit in the very arrangement for the plant itself, 

 there seems to shine forth a higher and nobler pur- 

 pose. In the multitude of seeds, an apparent waste 

 of energy, there seems to be a provision for their 

 legitimate destruction by a higher creation. And 

 if the grain of wheat fails to fill unless the germ is 

 there, who does not see that it is better for man 

 that it should be so ? It is best for him that every 

 grain of wheat should represent both so much food, 

 and also a certain centre of new plant life. With 

 what uncertainty v/ould the husbandman sow his 

 field, if perchance only one in a thousand of the pre- 

 cious grains scattered rm the furrow would give the 

 green blade, and, in time of harvest, the full ear ! 

 He who regards the support of animal life as the 

 highest use of the vegetable kingdom, must also see 



