CHAPTER II 



GLIMPSES INTO PLANT STRUCTURE 



IN the first chapter I mentioned that the common 

 green stain which coloured the damp portions of 

 my old wooden fence was made up of myriads of 

 individual living plants, and that these probably 

 reproduce to-day that simplest form of plant life 

 from which by natural evolution all the complex 

 and specialised trees and herbs around us have 

 gradually risen. Some of the simplest forms I 

 have already illustrated: but in view of the dignity 

 of their relationship it may be worth while to con- 

 sider more in detail these tiny plant-atoms which 

 occupy almost every damp and vacant niche in 

 Nature. 



Look at the old fence. A green film has en- 

 crusted all the lower part, so far as the damp 

 earth's influence reaches, giving it a bright colour 

 that you can see across the garden. I scrape it 

 with my little finger-nail and the green stuff that 

 comes off consists of many hundreds of one of the 

 simplest of known plants. These are the one- 



