CULTURE OF PLANTS. 131 



to cultivate the cereal-grasses into the wheat and bar- 

 ley which are now the bread and the drink of so 

 many millions. In the same manner, by cultivating 

 the apple, the pear, the peach, the plum, and count- 

 less other fruits, we have been able to turn an ope- 

 ration of nature, the natural purpose of which was 

 subservient to the maturing of the seed of a plant, 

 so much from the natural purpose of the plant and 

 to our own purpose, that the ripening of the seed is 

 actually secondary to the growing of a repast for us. 

 In all nature, the application of similar observations 

 has produced corresponding results ; and in some we 

 have destroyed the purpose of nature altogether, and 

 made the plant wholly our own and for our own 

 use, in its living state as well as when it is matured 

 and fit for our purpose. Many double flowers, and 

 the dahlia in an especial manner, which in their natu- 

 ral state had only one row of petals, have been so 

 much converted into petals by skilful culture, and 

 the size and beauty of these have been so much in- 

 creased along with their number, that the flower has 

 really ceased to be a flower, in the natural sense of 

 the word, though it has thereby become one of the 

 brightest ornaments of our gardens. There are 

 cases in which we have carried the matter even far- 

 ther : we have taught a number of the cruet/era, or 

 plants with four petals in the flower, arranged like 

 the arms of a cross, to linger in the bulbs of their 

 stems, their leaves, or their flower-buds, and there 

 form stores of provision for us ; and we have edu- 

 cated some of the early varieties of the potato out of 

 the habit of bearing flowers altogether, just as we 

 have educated other plants out of the habit of ma- 

 turing seeds. All that has been done in consequence 

 of careful observation of nature ; much of it by ob- 

 serving the effects of the sunbeams in their com- 

 pound state ; and not a little of that which regards 

 colour, by observing the action of those beams con- 

 sidered merely as light. 



