STRUCTURE OF PLANTS. 43 



duck-weed on our own ponds what a wonderful play of 

 fashioning, what wealth of forms ! 



From the six thousand years old Baobab, on the shores 

 of Senegal, the seeds of which perhaps vegetated before the 

 foot of man trod the earth, to the fungus, to which the 

 fertilizing warmth of a summer-night gave an existence 

 which the morning closed what differences of duration ! 

 From the firm wood of the New Holland oak, from which 

 the wild Aboriginal carves his war-club, to the green 

 slime upon our tombs, what multiformity, what gradations 

 of texture, composition and consistence ! Can one really 

 believe it possible to find order in this embarrassing 

 wealth, regularity in this seemingly disorderly dance of 

 forms, a single type in these thousandfold varieties of 

 habit ? Till within a few years of the present time, indeed, 

 the possibility was not yet conceived, for as I have before 

 remarked, we may never expect to be enabled to spy into 

 the mysteries of Nature, until we are guided by our 

 researches to very simple relations. Thus could we never 

 attain to scientific results respecting the plant, till we had 

 found the simple element, the regular basis of all the 

 various forms, and investigated and defined its vital 

 peculiarities. By the help of the improved microscopes, 

 we have at last advanced far enough to find the point of 

 departure of the general theory of the plant. 



The basis of the structure of all the so very dissimilar 

 vegetables, is a little closed vesicle, composed of a membrane 

 usually transparent and colourless as water; this Botanists 

 call the "cell" or "vegetable-cell." A review of the life 

 of the cell must necessarily precede the endeavour to 

 comprehend the whole plant, nay it is as yet, properly 

 speaking, almost the only really scientific part of Botany. 



But in these investigations our organs of sense fail us. 



