4 I 4 NINETEENTH CENTURY. FT. Hi. 



had a deep love of Nature, as may be seen in many of his 

 beautiful minor poems, and this love led him in the year 

 1 780 to devote himself to the study of the anatomy of plants 

 and animals. 



When he turned his attention to botany he was very 

 much struck with the power which plants have of trans- 

 forming or changing the growth of their parts. For example, 

 the common wild rose in the hedges has a crown of pink 

 petals, with stamens and carpels in the centre ; but the garden 

 rose, which is nothing more than the wild rose grown in a 

 better soil, has lost the stamens and pistils, or rather has 

 changed them into flower-leaves, so that the whole flower is 

 one mass of petals, and rarely forms any seeds. 



It is clear, therefore, said Goethe, that the stamens and 

 pistil of a plant are nothing more nor less than flower-leaves 

 transformed into a peculiar shape, so that they serve to form 

 seeds, and to carry on the life of the plant. And this is 

 true of all the different parts of the plants. Wherever you 

 look in the vegetable kingdom, you will find that every part 

 of a plant is nothing more than stem or leaves altered in 

 various ways to suit the work they have to do. Thus the 

 stem of a geranium, the trunk of a tree, the twining stalk 

 of the vine, the straw of wheat, the runners of a straw- 

 berry, and the fleshy potato, are all only different forms 

 of stems and branches. Again, the two cotyledons of a seed 

 which are well seen in the halves of a bean are but the 

 first pair of leaves. From between them grows the stem, 

 and out of this leaves of different forms, according to th.e 

 peculiar species of plant 



Then, as the plant develops, come the buds of the flower, 

 but these again are stems and leaves growing more thickly 

 together, but altered and adapted to new functions. We 

 find in different plants every variety of flower from mere 



