140 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



These provisions are for the plant itself, and only incidentally 

 for the" young plantlet which it is to produce. To see this 

 apparent parental care most fully manifested, we must e5:amine 

 the seed. In it is the germ of the young plant. But that germ 

 has no power, at first, over the earth or the gases of the air. It 

 is shut out mainly from both. For this helpless state p. provision 

 has been made. Around the germ, or in some way connected 

 with it, the parent plant garners the food which shall support 

 the germ till large enough to provide for itself. The kernel of 

 grain does not fill till its germ is fertilized, but when that is 

 done, when a centre of life is .formed, a new plant is there, then 

 the starch and sugar and oil are furnished by the parent stock 

 for its support. All this action is indeed organic, but it is a 

 perfect adaptation of means to ends. The machinery by which 

 the results are reached is as perfect in its s-tructure and action as 

 it is possible for us to conceive of. This provision is not made 

 in one plant alone, but in some form in all. It is not one kind 

 of material that is provided, but many. The work is not done 

 l;iy one method, but by methods almost numberless, and yet 

 every one of these methods commends itself most fully to our 

 judgment. There is not a single case in the thousands, that we 

 could improve upon for the welfare of the plant. We cannot 

 believe that these diverse methods are the development of some 

 force in nature or organizing principle. We cannot, Avithout 

 doing violence to our own mental constitution, regard these as 

 any other than. the provision of an intelligent Creator, whose 

 ways are perfect, whose wisdom and skill are infinite. 



Between the animal and plant there is a still more striking 

 series of adaptations than between either of them and the inor- 

 ganic world. They develop in opposite directions, so that the 

 more perfect the plant and the more perfect the animal, the 

 farther removed they are from each other in their structure and 

 nature. The likeness of one to the other is only of remote 

 analogy. And yet, in their most perfect state, when by their 

 nature they are most widely separated in their organic structure, 

 and in their conditions of life, it is often apparent that they 

 were constructed with direct reference to each other. The first 

 relationship which we notice is the perfect balance which has 

 been established between them in their effect upon the air by 

 their chemical action. Everything thrown off from an animal 



