132 THE MICROSCOPE AND ITS LESSONS. 



Here is a small seed of a garden plant called Collomia. 

 Moisture, again, is the necessary element employed for 

 the release of the embryo, which lies in the body of 

 the seed hidden as the soul does in the body of man. 

 Now, let me remove a very small portion of this little 

 seed, and, placing it on a slip of plain glass, while you 

 are looking down the microscope, put one small drop of 

 water on the slide. Immediately it comes in contact with 

 the embryo, a vast number of mechanical springs begin 

 to uncoil themselves, leaping out from the surface of the 

 seed. These springs are about the one five-thousandth 

 part less in size than they now appear to you to be. The 

 fibre of which these perfect pieces of mechanism are con- 

 structed is of the finest possible description, and the 

 workmanship and contrivance are singularly characteristic 

 of the most profound wisdom. Verily the works of the 

 Lord are " great," but they must be " sought out," and 

 that not by any careless observer, but by "those who 

 have pleasure therein." 



Now we shall get some small idea how it is that spores 

 of plants, which compose what we have called the lower 

 orders of vegetable life, are conveyed into the strange 

 places in which they are discovered. 



Have you ever observed a house-fly fastened on to a 

 pane of window-glass during the latter part of summer ? 

 Did you wonder at its prolonged position ? and did you, 

 on going close to it, find it quite dead and fastened on to 

 the glass, surrounded by a faint halo of greyish matter? 

 That fly, a poor Musca domestica (the common house-fly), 

 was destroyed by a vegetable, the spores of which, enter- 

 ing its body, multiplied with such amazing rapidity, that 

 at last, living upon the fly, the end came ; and then the 

 animal making a last effort to live, as is so commonly 

 done, it clung to the glass with its sucking tongue, while 



