250 BIOLOGY. 



pletely resembles a pinnate leaf with a phyllodium, as we 

 see it in the umbellate plants, only it must be thought 

 of as one so involuted, that the fine leaves adhere reversed 

 in the phyllodium. Seeds may consequently change into 

 leaves. A seed has therefore been formed also in all its 

 parts like a papilionaceous corolla. This resemblance 

 speaks moreover retrogressively, for the petals of the 

 papilionaceous corolla being viewed only as a single leaf- 

 bud. Seeds may therefore change also into corollae. All 

 parts of the seed are thus an unity, a single pinnate leaf, 

 and it is consequently impossible for them to have been 

 patched up out of what has been called the seed-ovum, 

 namely, the testa and embryo, which would come from 

 some other source or out of the pollen. 



1319. The seed is the whole plant in miniature : the 

 root being portrayed in the umbilical cord, and radical 

 leaf in the phyllodium; stalk in the radicle; caudal 

 leaves in the seed-lobes ; ramuscule in the cotyledonal 

 petiole; ramular leaves in the cotyledons. Seeds may 

 thus change into an entire plant. The seed is conse- 

 quently nothing new in the plant, but the repetition of 

 the same under the relations and forms of the root. 



1320. It is plain that the seeds must always change 

 into the same plant ; for they are indeed nothing else 

 but this. The identity ensuing upon propagation is 

 accordingly nothing singular and incomprehensible ; it 

 would be so were it otherwise. With the seed the 

 plant has but reverted again to its primary condition, to 

 the galvanic, mucous vesicle, out of which in a secondary 

 manner the young plant is developed like as is the first 

 plant out of the primary vesicle. 



1321. The radicle is not therefore root itself, but only 

 emits rootlets. 



1322. The germ or the radicle must observe different 

 positions towards the umbilicus, according as the seed- 

 leaf or the testa has been more or less involuted, and 

 according as the germ is removed from the micropyle. 



1323. The albumen or perisperm is no particular 

 organ, but only the deposit from the sap, which the inner 



