PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE SEED. 



THE FORMING OF SEED. We scatter some oat-grains over 

 the earth and then lightly cover them with the fine surface 

 soiL The spring rain falls, and the air grows warmer. In 

 a few days the green blades of the oat plants appear through 

 the soil all over the field. If we pull up some of these 

 green shoots we find that each one grows from a single 

 seed, and each plant has a bunch of small hairy roots. 

 If we look closely we may find the old husk, or the cover- 

 ing, of the grain that we planted, but nothing more. What 

 was once a seed has now become a plant with roots in 

 the soil and stalk and leaf above the soil. Perhaps we may 

 find some seeds that were buried too deeply and that have 

 not sprouted. On through the summer the oat plants grow, 

 tall and green ; soon the head branches out and blossoms 

 then the grain forms, first soft, soon becoming harder, and the 

 plants lose their green color and turn brown and yellow. We 

 cut down the plants and later on thresh them out, separating 

 the grain from the straw. The roots or stubble left behind 

 in the soil decay; they will not grow again. The straw also 

 will not grow ; it is fed to the stock or used as litter. But 

 the grain we may feed to the stock or we may use it again for 

 growing another crop of oats next year. We began with the 

 seed and the plant has given us seed again, just like the seed 

 with which we started. The seed, then, is the beginning and 

 the end of the oat plant, whose aim in growing appears to be 

 to form seed that will produce other plants like itself. The 



