10 MOKPHOLOGY, OE COMPAKATIYE ANATOMY. 



which are especially characterized by the presence of an embryo, or 

 rudimentary plant, which is developed within them while the seed 

 is still contained in the parent fruit. The latter division also is 

 characterized by the possession of flowers, while the spore-bearing 

 Cormophytes are flowerless, like the Thallophytes. 



By far the greater portion of the plants useful to man belong to 

 the Phanerogamous division ; and this includes also the most con- 

 spicuous and familiar forms of vegetation, those most easy to pro- 

 cure and most easy to study. Hence it is desirable that the 

 Flowering plants should occupy a principal place in an elementary 

 work, and, moreover, that they should be examined in the first 

 instance, before the student is led into the study of the more 

 obscure and minute characters of the Cryptogamia. But the study 

 of Cryptogamous plants is quite indispensable to the physiologist ; 

 while it forms a most interesting department of the morphology of 

 plants. It will be found most convenient, however, to defer the 

 study of the Cryptogamia till after a general acquaintance has been 

 obtained of Flowering plants. 



CHAPTER II. 



MORPHOLOGY OF THE PHANEROGAMIA. 

 Sect. 1. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



General Construction of Flowering Plants. In any ordinary 

 Flowering plant we may readily recognize some of the most impor- 

 tant characters of the organization. Taking the plant as a whole, 

 we find a stem, furnished below with roots to fix it in the ground 

 and absorb nourishment, and clothed above with green leaves, which 

 are known to be the organs of respiration and digestion. Taken 

 together these constitute the system of vegetative organs, more or 

 less complicated in their development and arrangement in different 

 cases, and concerned in the nutrition and enlargement of the indi- 

 vidual plant (in the familiar sense of that term). At certain 

 seasons we find, superadded to the foregoing, a system of organs 

 constituting the inflorescence, and consisting of the reproductive 

 organs, provided for the production of seeds (the " eggs," as it were, 

 of plants), from which new independent individuals may be raised. 



