fnoio by} 



FIG. 11. GRAINS OF BARLEY GERMINATING IN THE EAR. 



In wet seasons, when harvesting has to be postponed, the ripe corn will germinate in the ear and ruii 

 the crop. Long roots are formed which make towards the earth. 



POPULAR BOTANY 



THE LIVING PLANT FROM SEED TO FRUIT 



CHAPTER I 



THE PROTOPLAST 



IT is perhaps superfluous to ob- 

 serve that no links have yet 

 been found between living and not 

 living, between organic and inor- 

 ganic matter, and therefore between 

 plants and minerals. The doctrine 

 of spontaneous generation, by which 

 it has been attempted to supply 

 such a link, is based upon assump- 

 tion and not ascertained facts. The 

 most powerful plea that can be 

 urged for the doctrine is its an- 

 tiquity. The ancients had their 

 theory of spontaneous generation ; 

 though the ancients were not al- 

 ways right. It was Aristotle's belief 

 and teaching that frogs and snakes 

 sprang from mud and slime ; and 

 readers of Virgil (Georg. IV. 330-65) 

 will recollect the poet's recipe for 

 raising a swarm of bees from the 

 putrefying corpse of a two-year- 

 old bullock, by strewing broken 

 boughs and flowers of thyme and 

 cassia under the corpse. We must 

 2 



[K. Step. 



FIG. 12. BARLEY (Hordeum). 



Unripe and ripe flower-spikes. To the left are two de- 

 tached flowers (spikelets) with extended glumes. Below 

 them is a barley-corn, and to the right of it a fully expanded 

 flower showing the male and female parts. Between the 

 spikes are shown barley-corns in process of germination. 



