REPRODUCTION IN THE LOWEST PLANTS. 273 



these movements (which is still obscure), they do not afford any 

 evidence of being guided by Sensation and "Will, of which no 

 real Animal can be entirely destitute. 



425. In all these cases, the process of Reproduction is per- 

 formed in a manner as simple as that, which any of the functions 

 of Vegetable Life present to us. There is nothing more won- 

 derful in the fact, that a cell should produce the rudiments or 

 germs of new cells, in its interior, than that it should develope 

 additional cells which are to form parts of its own structure, (as 

 in the Yeast-plant, . 56, and higher plants in general,) from its 

 outside. Each may be regarded as a Law of Nature ; which is 

 only saying, that it is the mode in which the Creator operates. 

 Now we shall find that, in higher plants, the essential part of 

 the reproductive process is really the same following the same 

 general laws ; and it is one of the most interesting results of 

 scientific research, to see that things which appear widely dif- 

 ferent, may often prove to be closely connected. We may hence 

 learn a lesson, too, which is very useful in the ordinary concerns 

 of life, not to judge too hastily by appearances. Nothing 

 could seem more unlike, than the production of the seed of some 

 noble tree, from the elegant flower, with all its complex apparatus 

 of parts, and the propagation of the humble kinds of vegeta- 

 tion we have been considering, by the simple contrivances just 

 described. And yet it will be seen that, although in the former 

 there is much of an additional character, subservient to particular 

 purposes, yet the mode in which the germ is at first produced, 

 is essentially the same. 



426. The first stage of this increasing complexity, is seen in 

 the higher Sea- weeds; in which, of the large number of cells 

 that the whole plant contains, only a small part are appropriated 

 to this function. Sometimes these reproductive cells are spread 

 over the whole surface of their leaf-like expansion ; but some- 

 times they are restricted to the extremities of the plant. In the 

 common Bladder- wrack (Fucus vesiculosus, Fig. ]3), which 

 abounds on most of the shores of Britain, a swelling may be seen 

 at the end of each of its divisions, which is distinguished from 

 the rest by its yellow colour, when the fructification which it 



