CHAPTER XII. 



OF THE REPRODUCTION OF PLANTS. 



423. THE limits which have been. set by the Creator, to the 

 duration of the life of each being, that exists at any one time on 

 the surface of the globe, would cause the earth to be speedily 

 unpeopled, were not a compensation provided in the faculty of 

 Reproduction, or the formation of a new being similar to itself, 

 possessed by every kind of Plant and Animal. This power 

 of creating (as it were) a living structure, with all its wondrous 

 mechanism, possessed, too, in Animals of the faculties of sen- 

 sation and thought, and in Man the residence of an immortal 

 spirit, seems at first sight more extraordinary and mysterious, 

 than any which we elsewhere witness. Yet it is not perhaps so 

 in reality. The processes which are constantly taking place 

 during the life of each being, and which are necessary to the 

 maintenance of its own existence, are no less wonderful, and no 

 less removed from anything which we witness in the world of 

 dead matter. When the tree unfolds its leaves with the return- 

 ing warmth of spring, there is as much to interest and astonish, 

 in the beautiful structure and important uses of these parts, as 

 there is in the expansion of its more gay and variegated blos- 

 soms ; and when it puts forth new buds, which by their exten- 

 sion prolong its branches over a part of the ground previously 

 unshaded by its foliage, the process is in itself as wonderful, as 

 the formation of the seed that is to propagate its race in some 

 distant spot. Thus it is that scientific knowledge heightens our 

 interest in Nature, by showing that, in those things which seem 

 most common, there are as many sources of interest and instruc- 

 tion, as in that which, from its apparently mysterious character, 

 is usually regarded with more curiosity. 



