278 REPRODUCTION IN FLOWERING PLANTS. 



serves but to give to the philosophic mind a glimpse of the won- 

 ders of Creation ; and there can scarcely be to such a mind a 

 more powerful natural* argument in favour of a future state, 

 than that which rests upon the vast amount of knowledge, of 

 which the sources are presented to Man, and the insatiable 

 desire for it which he possesses, compared with his very limited 

 power of satisfying that desire, within the short duration of an 

 ordinary life. All analogy, then, leads to the conclusion, that 

 with the mortal body, the soul shall cast away those instruments, 

 which are adapted only to the present material finite state of 

 existence, and shall be endowed with more direct means of 

 becoming acquainted with those glorious truths, which here it 

 only sees " as through a glass, darkly." 



432. To return from this digression. In reviewing the pro- 

 cesses of Reproduction in Cryptogamia, we perceive that they 

 are everywhere essentially the same. The spore, or reproduc- 

 ti re cell, contains a number of granules, each of which is capable 

 of producing a new cell, at the expense of the fluid which its 

 parent contains ; and these new cells are able, either together or 

 separately, to develope themselves into plants similar to their 

 parents, without any other influences, than those which they 

 receive from the light, air, and moisture, which surround them. 

 In the lowest cryptogamia, we have seen that these granules are 

 thrown at once, as it were, upon their own resources ; being set 

 free by the parent-cell before their development into new cells 

 has commenced. But in the higher, we have observed that they 

 remain within the parent cell, which seems to elaborate or pre- 

 pare their nourishment. Now we shall find that the real essen- 

 tial difference between the Phanerogamic and the Cryptogamic 

 (the flowering and the flowerless) plant, consists in this, that 

 the former possesses a series of organs fitted to receive and che- 

 rish the germ, and to assist in its early development, of which 

 the latter is destitute ; and that the presence or absence of those 

 parts, which are ordinarily known as constituting the flower, is 

 of no primary importance. These parts are often absent, with- 

 out the process of Reproduction being thereby affected ; and, on 



* By this is meant an argument drawn from the Natural World, as distinct 

 ftom the Revealed Word of God. 



