42 BIOLOGY OF PLANTS. 



similar to chalk or marble ; and a semi-fluid mass of white 

 and yolk within, consisting mostly of a substance which chem- 

 ists call albumen. It gives no signs of life. It hardly exhibits 

 the marks of organization, and yet, let that same egg be sub- 

 ject to warmth for a few weeks, and you will find that it has 

 been touched by the life-giving power of the Creator ; that he 

 has impressed it with a living energy, which will soon be de- 

 veloped in an organized, sensitive being ; so peculiar in its 

 composition, that no chemist can ever produce its like, so 

 perfect in every part of its structure, that no mechanic can 

 form even the smallest feather that tips the wing of the chick. 



Or, if we take a seed, a kernel of corn, and examine that, 

 we shall find it a hard, dry substance, different in composi- 

 tion and appearance from an egg, consisting mostly of mucil- 

 age and starch. It too is the most unlikely thing to be pos- 

 sessed of vitality. You may keep it a hundred years, for aught 

 I know, and it is still the same apparently dead substance. 

 But only cast it into the earth, subject it to heat and moisture, 

 and after this long sleep of a century,* it will also show, that 

 when it was matured upon the parent stalk, perhaps in some 

 remote corner of the globe, the Creator treasured up and 

 guarded in it a vital power, which will be exhibited by its tak- 

 ing root downward, and springing upward a living organized 

 body, provided with organs capable of converting that which 

 contains the contagion of death into the staff of life. 



And what serves to increase our admiration, is the fact, 

 that this power is not confined to a few seeds which are es- 



* Seeds probably possess different powers of life, some preserving 

 their vital principle through centuries of time, while others have an 

 ephemeral existence under any circumstances. The reasons for this 

 difference are unknown to us, and apparently depend upon a First 

 Cause, over whicli we have therefore no control. * * I have myself 

 raised raspberry plants from seeds found in an ancient coffin in a bor- 

 ough in Dorsetshire, which seeds, from the coins and other relics met 

 with near them, may be estimated to have been sixteen or seventeen 

 hundred years old. — Lindlcy. 



