Evolution of Vegetal Life. 113 



not distinguishable either as plant or animal, — or Avhetlier 

 it is to be a rose, a violet, a palm or an oak, — a worm, a tish, 

 a lion or a man. Its future is absolutely unpredictable, and 

 yet upon it have been impressed or within it are contained 

 the influences which determine which of these forms it shall 

 take, in what way it shall resemble other beings, and in 

 what way be distinguished from them : whether it shall live 

 a stationary life, rooted to a rock or to the soil, — accepting 

 the fate which the winds and the waters bring it, — or 

 whether it shall have the power of flying to " fresh Avoods 

 and pastures new"; whether it shall be a characterless 

 automaton, or whetlier it sliall s])eculate upon the origin of 

 things, and upon life and death, the infinite and the abso- 

 lute. 



If we follow the changes in this cell, we find it gradually 

 becoming larger, and dividing by a partition into two, into 

 four, and so on, until a tissue is formed ; into a substance 

 having perceptible length, breadth and thickness. At last 

 we recognize it as a seed : two minute leaflets attached to 

 the rudiment of a stem, all enclosed within a surface mem- 

 brane. This is now distinctly the beginning of a plant, 

 and with numerous others it is contained within the orange- 

 colored '•' hip." In this state it is quiescent, but if after a 

 time we place it in the earth, Ave shortly find it burst its 

 sheath : the stem lengthens and pushes doAvnward ; the leaf- 

 lets, reaching toward the surface, separate, and from be- 

 tween them there rises a sprout. Hoav is this done ? Sim- 

 ply by the increase in size, and the multiplication of the 

 cells already formed, by absorption of the necessary chem- 

 ical constituents found in the soil. But these cells noAv 

 haA^e a more definite arrangement. Some form a Avhite root, 

 and some a stem also Avhite, until it thrusts into the air and 

 light the point of a leaf, which immediately takes a tint of 



green. 



From this time on subsistence is not drawn from the soil 

 alone, but from the air also. The leaf is not simply the 

 right boAver of the plant ; it is its essential, I might say its 

 only essential organ. There are, it is true, some plants 

 which get along Avithout leaves ; such, for example, as the 

 bright orange-colored dodder, common in our meadows and 

 by the brooksides, trailing its long thread-like stems over 

 shnibs and herbs, a golden netAvork, with never a leaf, but 

 Avith clusters of Avhite blossoms. But these are lazy rogues. 



