Cleavers. 105 



in this, that, or the other particular. Just as a single 

 little cartilaginous mud- haunter — a blind and skulking 

 small creature, something like a lancelet, something 

 like a tadpole, and something like the famous ascidian 

 larva — has gradually evolved, through diverse lines, 

 all the existing races of beasts, birds, reptiles, and 

 fishes, so too a single little primeval plant, something 

 like these two lowest leaves of the goose-grass, has 

 gradually evolved all the oaks and elms and ashes ; 

 all the roses, and geraniums, and carnations ; all the 

 cabbages, and melons, and apples, which we see in 

 the world around us at the present da}-. And, again, 

 just as the larval form of the ascidian and of the frog 

 still preserves for us a general idea of that earliest 

 ancestral vertebrate, so too these larval leaves of the 

 goose-grass, if I may venture so to describe them, 

 still preserve for us a general idea of that earliest 

 dicotyledonous plant. 



Dicotyledonous is a very ugly word, and I shall 

 not stop now to explain it from the top of a five- 

 barred gate. It must suffice if I tell you confidenti- 

 ally that the little plant we have ideally reconstructed 

 was the first ancestor of almost all the forest trees, 

 and of all the best known English herbs and flowers ; 

 but not of the lilies, the grasses, and the cereal 

 kinds, which belong to the opposite or monocotyle- 



