56 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



lessons the artificial system of Linnaeus will not be adopted as 

 a basis for teaching the science. In point of fact, the Linnsean 

 system may now be considered as obsolete. In making this divi- 

 sion of plants into evident-flowering and non-evident flowering, 

 or phasnogamous and cryptogamic, the learner must take care not 

 to fall into mistakes. He must greatly expand his common 

 notions of a flower, and not restrict the appellation to those 

 pretty floral ornaments which become objects of attraction, and 

 of which bouquets are made. On the contrary, he must admit 

 to the right of being regarded as a flower any floral part, how- 

 ever small, even though a lens should prove necessary for the 

 discovery. Thus, in common language, we do not usually speak 

 of the oak, and .the ash, and the beech, elm, etc., as being 

 flower-bearing trees ; but they are, nevertheless ; and consequently 

 belong to the first grand division of evident floiver-bearing, or 

 phsenogamous or phanerogamous plants. In point of fact, the 

 learner may remember as a rule, to which there are no excep- 



and-by) let him turn the lower surface of the frond upper- 

 most, and there will be seen many rows of dark stripes. These 

 are termed sporidia, and they contain the sporules of the plant, 

 which sporules therefore may be got by opening the sporidia* 

 Sporules, when regarded by the naked eye, look almost like) 

 dust ; when examined under a microscope, however, their outline 

 can be easily recognised. The difference between a trporidiwni 

 (singular of sporidia) and a real seed may be thus explained. 

 A seed has only one part (the embryo or germ) from which tho 

 young plant can spring ; whereas a sporule does not refuse to 

 sprout from any side which may present itself to the necessary 

 conditions of earth and moisture. 



Although the sporules are thus easily discoverable in the fern 

 tribe, yet the botanical student must not expect to find them 

 thus readily in other members of the cryptogamic tribe, in 

 various members of which not only does their position vary, 

 but their presence is totally undiscoverable. 



THE BANYAN TREE. 



tions, that every member of the vegetable world which bears a 

 ,fruit, and consequently seeds, belongs to the phanerogamous 

 idivision. By following the indications of this rule, we restrict 

 the cryptoga/mic, or non-evident-flowering plants, to the seemingly 

 narrow limits of ferns, mushrooms, mosses, and a few others, 

 all of which are devoid of seeds, properly so called, but are 

 furnished with a substitute for seeds, termed sporules or spores. 

 Sporules, then, the learner may remember, are, so to speak, the 

 seeds of flowerless and therefore seedless plants. In the study 

 of botany we meet with a great many hard, but useful terms; 

 they will spring up in our path often enough, therefore let 

 us shoot them flying whenever we have a chance, and fix them 

 on some sort of memory-peg, even although the latter may be 

 a joke. 



If the reader wishes to ascertain what these sporules are like, 

 let him take the leaf of a fern which, by the way, is no leaf at 

 all, but a frond (we will explain the meaning of this term by- 



SECTION HI. ON THE ORGANS OF VEGETABLES. 



Vegetable organs admit of the very natural division into 

 those intended for nutriment and growth, and those intended 

 for propagation. Hence we may speak of them as nutritive 

 and reproductive organs. Nutritive organs consist of leaves, 

 stems, branches, roots, and various appendages to all of these, 

 hereafter to be described; whilst the reproductive organs of 

 vegetables are flowers and their appendages. 



The Root. We have already seen that it does not suffice to 

 constitute a root that the portion of the vegetable treated of 

 be underground Thus, for example, as it was remarked in the 

 preceding lesson, the potato is not a root, but a tuber ; an onion 

 is not a root, but a bulb. 



A root may be defined as a filamentous or thread-like (Latin 

 filum, a thread) offset from the descending axis of the plant, 

 differing from the stem itself in certain relations of a botanical 

 structure, a.nd each filament endiner in a soft absorbent tuft 



