114 Evolution of Vegetal Life. 



mere parasites, which do not even remain rooted in the 

 ground, although they start there, but which attach them- 

 selves to other plants, and, too indolent to manufacture their 

 own sap, plunder the vegetables, to which they have affixed 

 themselves, of the material which they had provided for 

 their own growth. There are numerous other plants not 

 growing from the soil, such as the air-plants, with their gor- 

 geous, or their fantastic insect or birdlike flowers ; but these, 

 to do them justice, are not so wholly idle and degraded : 

 they are provided with leaves with which they earn their 

 own living ; they do not draAv nourishment from the trees 

 upon which they are found, but merely use them for sup- 

 port. 



As the cells become more numerous, they also become 

 more and more diversified in structure. In different parts 

 they are different in form, in size and in their nature ; some 

 are very beautiful ; most are small, but othe'rs take the form 

 of tubes, and are enormous, having a length in some in- 

 stances as great as one-sixth of an inch ! But this is an ex- 

 treme case. The crude ingredients for the sustenance of 

 the plant are absorbed by the root, and transferred from one 

 closed cell to another, through many millions it may be, un- 

 til they reach the leaves, where they are mixed with the 

 constituents of the atmosphere, and elaborated into the pro- 

 toplasm from which the plant is built up. The rapidity 

 with which this transference may take place you have your- 

 selves noticed, when you have taken a drooping flower and 

 placed it in a vessel of water. How soon the stem, leaves 

 and blossom regained their firmness, their rigidity, their 

 elasticity, their " life " ! 



The plant now sends up a stem upon which appear bnds ; 

 these unfold into leaves ; branches grow from the axils of 

 the leaves, and leaves appear upon these in turn, and 

 thorns form, by which the plant is defended. A flower is 

 no necessary part of a plant ; it is but one means of pro- 

 viding for a continuance of the series. The flower itself is 

 but a series of modifications of a cluster of leaves, some 

 of which have become sepals, some petals, some stamens, 

 and some pistils. At a recent meeting of the Koyal Hor- 

 ticultural Society in London, an Alpine strawberry was 

 shown in which all parts of the flower were more or less 

 represented by leaves. The strawberry is a near relative, 

 a sort of cousin-german as it were, of the rose. 



