SECT. xin. ENDOGENOUS PLANTS. 383 



SECTION xm. 



MONOCOTYLEDONOUS, OB ENDOGENOUS PLANTS. 



THE structure, growth, and reproduction of the flower- 

 bearing vegetation offer objects of the highest inte- 

 rest, though very different from those furnished by the 

 flowerless class. The plants whose seeds have but one 

 lobe form a transition from the lowest to the highest 

 class of vegetables, and include those which furnish the 

 principal articles of food to man and animals. They 

 are all flower-bearing, and consist of numerous fami- 

 lies of land and water plants. The most important are 

 the palms, which serve for food in tropical countries, 

 the grasses, which are cosmopolite and social, cover- 

 ing extensive tracts of country with rich verdure, and 

 including the Cerealia, which have been cultivated from 

 such remote antiquity, that the grasses from whence 

 they were derived are unknown. This monocotyledonous 

 class includes, besides the palms and cereals already 

 mentioned, the sugar-cane, the bamboo and other canes, 

 together with reeds, rushes, screw pines, most garden 

 bulbs, the singular and beautiful race of Orchids, and a 

 multitude of other ornamental and useful plants. 



The seeds of this class consist of a thin skin covering 

 a mass of white or green matter, which, when ripe, con- 

 stitutes the starch and flour in the Cerealia. Within 

 that matter lies a fleshy lobe with the infant plant 

 imbedded in one corner. The same general struc- 

 ture may be traced throughout the class, though the 

 lobe with its embryo in the surrounding matter may 



