CHAPTER XIX 



CHANCES OF LIFE 



Of all the wonderful things in nature, surely a seed is 

 one of the most wonderful. How dead and helpless it 

 looks; how very little it tells us about itself, and yet how 

 very much is wrapped up in it! Seed: especially small 

 seeds from the same plant, look just as much alike as 

 grains of sand. Indeed, peas have become proverbial; 

 and we say **as much alike as peas in a pod," when we 

 mean that things, or people, are quite without individual 

 character. 



And yet each seed, even the smallest and most dust- 

 like, has a character of its own — a character which distin- 

 guishes it not merely from other seeds of different families, 

 but a character which distinguishes it also from all its 

 nearest relations, even from those which grew in the same 

 pod with it. 



Probably it is only want of sight which prevents our 

 seeing the difference between one seed and another, for 

 certainly even the most careless observer will admit that 

 he has never yet found two perfectly identical plants. 

 Not even two peas, taken from the same pod, will grow 

 up precisely alike. 



But as long as the seed is kept from its natural bed in 

 the earth, it not only looks dead, but is dead to all intents 

 and purposes, for it has no means of showing that it 

 lives — dead, however, with a possibility of life, which 



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