Cleavers. 105 



in this, that, or the other particular. Just as a single 

 little cartilaginous mud-haunter— a blind and skulking 

 small creature, something like a lancelet, something 

 like a tadpole, and something like the famous ascidian 

 larva — has gradually evolved, through diverse lines, 

 all the existing races of beasts, birds, reptiles, and 

 fishes, so too a single little primaeval plant, something 

 like these two lowest leaves of the goose-grass, has 

 gradually evolved all the oaks and elms and ashes ; 

 all the roses, and geraniums, and carnations ; all the 

 cabbages, and melons, and apples, which we see in 

 the world around us at the present day. And, again, 

 just as the larval form of the ascidian and of the frog 

 still preserves for us a general idea of that earliest 

 ancestral vertebrate, so too these larval leaves of the 

 goose-grass, if I may venture so to describe them, 

 still preserve for us a general idea of that earliest 

 dicotyledonous plant. 



Dicotyledonous is a very ugly word, and I shall 

 not stop now to explain it from the top of a five- 

 barred gate. It must suffice if I tell you confidenti- 

 ally that the little plant we have ideally reconstructed 

 was the first ancestor of almost all the forest trees, 

 and of all the best known English herbs and flowers ; 

 but not of the lilies, the grasses, and the cereal 

 kinds, which belong to the opposite or monocotyle- 



