PLANT-LIFEGENERATION. 251 



ries, nuts, etc., is thus the vast storehouse of 

 Life on which animals feed, ever renewing 

 their organic existence, and plants likewise 

 get sustenance thence. So arises this in- 

 creased care of Nature for protecting and 

 preserving in the seed her generative power. 

 The Angiosperm seems to return upon the 

 fern-leaf and to transform it into a seed- 

 house whose walls now guard the precious 

 contents inside; whereas in the fern (first 

 stage of the Cormophyte) the leaf was quite 

 independent of the seed, the master of it more 

 than the servant, though this relation seems 

 already reversed in the fossil Pteridosperm. 

 The seed in general has prepared for man his 

 assimilative life-stuff directly, and also indi- 

 rectly through the lower animals. But the 

 seed must get its store through the Plant 

 from the vast reservoir of Earth-life, which 

 man cannot bite off immediately. At least 

 not yet ; possibly the time may come when he 

 through science may be able to tap the primal 

 fountain of Life without the mediation of the 

 Plant-world. But for the present the little 

 vegetal cell has to individuate all life-energy 

 for the animal, as far as we can now see. 



The Angiosperrns are the culmination of the 

 Cormophytes, hence of the Plant-world. They 

 are a third stage or division again, and indi- 

 cate the highest evolution of vegetal life, 



