APRIL. 35 



by one plant or another. The gush of new life is most 

 marked, nevertheless, at the period we are consider- 

 ing, just as autumn is emphatically marked by ripe 

 results. 



Those seeds in which two distinct halves form the 

 great mass of the contents, are proved by this struc- 

 ture to belong to one of the great primary classes into 

 which all flowering plants whatever are divisible. 

 This is a very interesting fact to take note of when at 

 work in the garden. While trimming our borders and 

 plucking up the weeds, it is impossible not to be 

 struck with the appearance of these little coupled 

 leaves, and in observing them we unconsciously 

 become familiar with one of the leading particulars of 

 vegetable structure. When the seed produces a pair 

 of seed-leaves, with an embryo, we know from that 

 little circumstance, trifling as it may appear in itself, 

 that should it grow to be a tree, it will have branches, 

 and boughs, and twigs, not like a palm-tree, which 

 is destitute of these parts, but like an oak, or an elm, 

 or a birch. Further, we know that the leaves and the 

 flowers will both have a specific structure ; in a word, 

 that the whole idea of the tree will be marked by a 

 speciality of organic form. When, on the other hand, 

 the seed is formed like a grain of wheat, containing a 

 large quantity of free farina, and only one seed-leaf, 

 we know that the stem will be branchless, the leaves 

 and flowers, again, with a speciality quite different from 



