THE THREE CONDITIONS OF THE SEED 23 



Independently from different seeds or sets of seeds of the 

 same species, since the opportunities of making a successful 

 series of observations on individual seeds were rare. In 

 Table B will be found a number of swelling ratios for other 

 seeds as determined by the data supplied by Hoffmann and 

 Nobbe. As supplementing my own results they are extremely 

 valuable, since they supply some of the conspicuous deficiencies 

 in Table A, and enable one to extend the field of inquiry in 

 a tentative fashion over a large portion of the seed-bearing 

 plant-world. It should of course be remembered that even 

 with the best of observers and the best of conditions such 

 results can only be approximations ; and it must not be 

 forgotten that we are concerned here not merely with one 

 process, but with all those changes concerned with the transition 

 from the pre-resting stage to the eve of the germinating 

 condition. The results as a whole are to be regarded here 

 as supporting the general contention, based on the study of 

 individual seeds, that the seed in swelling for germination is 

 as a rule returning to the pre-resting or so-called unripe 

 condition, that it gains in swelling what it lost in shrinking, 

 and that the relation of the swelling to the shrinking seed is 

 mainly reciprocal, the resting stage figuring as an interruption 

 in the embryo's development in response to the pressure of 

 external conditions. 



Before discussing these data, one may remark that there 

 is little that is novel in the enunciation of this principle. 

 Gardeners must often act on the tacit assumption of its reality, 

 and scientific investigators have gone far to establish it. In 

 our case it is particularly necessary to possess a clear conception 

 of the mutual relation of the shrinking and swelling processes, 

 since without the establishment of some preliminary general 

 principle we should be unable to study with profit the 

 mechanism of these processes as exhibited in the separate 

 behaviour of the seed's coats and its kernel (see Chapter IX). 



This principle was so fully expected and accepted by Dr Dr Nobbe's 

 Nobbe that he was satisfied with only a few experiments P''°° " 



