SEEDS. 143 



The number of seeds produced by some annuals 

 is very astonishing. More than thirty thousand 

 have been found in a single head of poppy-; and in 

 some other plants the number is still greater. In 

 the great Cat's Tail, T/pha ma'jor, the seeds are 

 blown off by the wind, and no doubt many of them 

 lost ; but this effect is provided against by their vast 

 number, each spike generally bearing about forty 

 thousand seeds ! so that upon the three spikes, which 

 every plant commonly produces, there are every year 

 more than a hundred and twenty thousand seeds. 

 The Tobacco, Nicotia'na Tab'acum, of a genus in 

 the class Pentandria, has been known to produce, 

 on one plant, three hundred and sixty thousand 

 seeds ; and the annual produce of a single stalk of 

 Spleenwort, a kind of Fern, has been estimated at 

 a million. 



EDWARD. 



And do all plants produce seeds ? 



MOTHER. 



All annual and most perennial plants do so, 

 when they grow in a favourable soil and situ- 

 ation. 



The structure of seeds, and the manner in 

 which they grow, or germinate, are of great im- 

 portance in botany ; because they are found to 

 be always connected with great differences, both 

 in the inward structure, and in the form and ap- 



