REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 81 



furnish it with objects that should delight it, 

 and we can scarcely behold these jewels of the 

 field, and not say of them as the son of Sirach 

 did of the brilliant bow whose tints they emu- 

 late, "Look on the 'flowers' and praise Him 

 who made them, very beautiful they are in the 

 brightness thereof." 



56. Plants are distinguished, with reference 

 to the organs of fructification, into two great 

 classes, phanerogamic, or those which have 

 their flowers visible to the naked eye, and are 

 more or less symmetrical ; and cryptogamic, in 

 which the flowers, if they exist, are invisible 

 except by the microscope, and are little, if at 

 all symmetrical. In the former group the seed- 

 bearing and fecundating organs are very dis- 

 tinct ; in the latter they are not so. The first 

 include all the Exogenes, and the greater part 

 of the Endogenes, the second all the cellulares 

 and some of the Endogenes. 



57. At a longer or shorter period before a 

 Phanerogamic plant is about to put forth blos- 

 soms, points appear called Flower Buds, sur- 

 rounded like the Leaf Buds above described, by 

 developed or undeveloped leaves, and like them 

 really situated at the axil of a leaf, though that 

 leaf may have been rudimentary and oblite- 



