196 SPRING. 



of nature will neither be very extensive nor very 

 accurate. 



And it is a matter well worthy of enquiry, in what 

 manner a little germ, that is absolutely microscopic, and 

 in its first state even less than that, and which, when 

 in a perfectly whole and healthy state, has not a pore in 

 it that will admit one grain of the finest powder into 

 which any substance can be reduced by art, should yet 

 accumulate matter to itself, quite different from all the 

 matter around it, and repeat itself, in individuals of 

 the same kind, perhaps a million of times over ; that 

 one little seed or slip, for instance, brought from the 

 opposite side of the earth, should now be the pride of 

 all the gardens of Britain ; or, that millions of people 

 should now be fed, year after year, by the labours 

 of a little seed, gleaned probably by accident upon the 

 mountains of central America. 



It is impossible not to wish to know all that we can 

 about the operation of that which is so prolific and so 

 beneficial ; the more so that it is an enquiry in which 

 we cannot take a single step without finding something 

 that we can turn to advantage. We cannot get the 

 first link of the chain : the seed is not it, for the rudi- 

 ment of that is in the parent bud, ere yet the flower or 

 the leaf be expanded; and the forms of grown plants 

 are so many that, though the principal and the general 

 mode of action be the same in them all, it is not easy, 

 probably not possible, to get one description that will 

 apply to all the modifications of the process of vegeta- 

 tion. Annual, biennial, and perennial, are three forms ; 

 the first applying to the leaves of most plants, the 



