154 From Matter to Man. 



action into a complete germinal cell, and eventually 

 by cell-division evolve into a new plant 



Even as a galvanic battery is incomplete without 

 the two reciprocating metals in the proper sexual 

 solution, so the germ or seed of a plant is incomplete 

 and void of energy until it contains the dual or 

 sexual elements. In the locomotion and complex 

 functions performed by the pollen grain in seeking 

 a mate, we are reminded of the complex animal 

 functions of the protophyta and the swarm-spores of 

 cryptogams. Thus, a tube is emitted from the pollen 

 grain which descends through the stigma and the 

 style, enters the cavity of the ovary, selects an ovule, 

 traverses the canal of the micropyle, penetrates the 

 nucleus, and at last empties its protoplasmic contents 

 into the embryo sac. Thus, chance conditions being 

 favourable, the whole process is chemical, mechanical, 

 and automatic. 



The automatic character of vegetal reproduction is 

 further illustrated by only one ovule in the ovary of 

 a flower, out of hundreds, becoming fertilized. Many 

 ovules thus have their normal functions unfulfilled, 

 their automatic preparations for becoming fecundated 

 nullified, and their preliminary arrangements for per- 

 petuation blasted, solely through untoward conditions. 

 This waste of reproductive elements is incomparably 

 greater in the male than in the female organs. For 

 example, wistaria senensis contains 7000 male pollen 

 grains to each female ovule ; a dandelion contains 

 243,000 male pollen grains; a paeony 3,654,000; 



