SEED. 



1G3 



insipid fruit may be possibly improved (204.) or may be the 

 means of improving something else. 



240. It is very much upon such considerations as the fore- 

 going that the rules of training must depend. 



IX. Seed. 



241. The seed is the ovulum arrived at perfection. 



242. It consists of an integument enclosing an embryo, which 

 is the rudiment of a future plant 



243. The seed is nourished by the same means as the fruit; 

 and, like it, will be more or less perfectly formed, according 

 to the abundance of its nutriment. 



244. The plant developed from the embryo in the seed, will, 

 be in all essential particulars like its parent species. 



245. Unless its nature has been changed by hybridising. (204.) 



246. But although it will certainly, under ordinary circum- 

 stances, reproduce its species, it will by no means uniformly 

 reproduce the particular variety by which it was borne. 



217. So that seeds are not the proper means of propagating 

 varieties. 



248. Nevertheless, in annual or biennial plants, no means 

 can be employed for propagating a variety, except the seeds ; 

 and yet the variety is preserved. 



249. This is accomplished solely by the great care of the 

 cultivator, and happens thus. 



250. Although a seed will not absolutely propagate the in- 

 dividual, yet as a seed will partake more of the nature of its 

 actual parent than of any thing else, its progeny may be ex- 

 pected, as really happens, to resemble the variety from which 

 it sprung, more than any other variety of its species. 



251. Provided its purity have not been contaminated by the 

 intermixture of other varieties. 



252. By a careful eradication of all the varieties from the 

 neighbourhood of that from which seed is to be saved, by 

 taking care that none but (he most genuine forms of a variety 

 are preserved, as seed-plants : and by compelling by trans- 

 plantation a plant to expend all its accumulated sap in the 

 nourishment of its seeds, instead of in the superabundant 

 production of foliage, a crop of seed may be procured, the 

 plants produced by which will, in a great measure, have the 

 peculiar properties of the parent variety. 



253. By a series of progressive seed savings upon the same 

 plan, plants will be at length obtained, in which the habits 

 of the individual have become as it were fixed, and capable of 

 such exact reproduction by seed, as to form an exception to 

 the general rule ; as in Turnips, Radishes, &c. 



254. But if the least neglect occurs in taking the necessary 

 precautions (252.) to ensure a uniform crop of seed, possessing 



