GLIMPSES INTO PLANT STRUCTURE 57 



fence with your finger-nail, to the towering trunks 

 of the pine-woods which furnish masts for the 

 navy that rules the seas, there is only this differ- 

 ence of cells forced by compression to take some 

 shapes and expanding with vitality into others, 

 according to the function which Nature's necessity 

 has decreed that they must perform. 



It is not easy to make so very dry a subject as 

 structural botany interesting. It is too full of 

 terrifying technical terms. I am endeavouring, 

 however, so far as possible, to avoid all " nomen- 

 clature," and I hope that this and the other 

 chapters dealing with structural botany in this 

 volume may not appear altogether uninteresting 

 and unintelligible even to non-scientific readers. 

 To the well-balanced mind, any portion of any 

 plant, when microscopically examined, reveals the 

 ordered pencilling of its Creator, no matter in 

 what human terms its wonders may be expressed. 



