THE LOWER FORMS OF LIFE. 7 



Now what does this process involve : (1) The presence of the 

 flour of the seed ; (2) that this flour should be of such a constitution 

 and consistency as to be able to resist the decomposing agencies 

 around it, until it is called into use by the vital energies of the 

 embryonic wheat-plant ; and (3) that it should be so constituted 

 chemically as to be easily converted into the soluble food requisite 

 for the young plant. 



But the plant though a living, is an unconscious being. Though 

 it performs, it can have no share in the prospective issue involved in 

 these processes. As reasoning creatures, we should do very much the 

 same if we had the future of the wheat-plant to provide for. We 

 could, however, only do this by the faculties which constitute 

 our reason, that is, by comparing the experience of the past with the 

 necessities of the future ; but in this process of germination all is 

 done without knowledge, feeling, sense, or reason, and we therefore, 

 and of a necessity from which there is no escape, come to the con- 

 viction of the operation of a Great First Cause. 



OHAPTEE II. 

 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A GRAIN OF WHEAT 



, (continued*). 



HAVING started our young plant in life it makes good use of its 

 time, feeds upon the sugary food provided for it, and in due season 

 the wheat-plant produces roots. 



Every one knows what the root of a plant is, as it appears to the 

 eye. Comparatively speaking, few people know it as an organised 

 structure. 



The cell which forms the embryonic radicle (Fig. 2, p. 3) multi- 

 plies, and the root grows in the form of a minute filament or thread- 

 like organ, which strikes down into the earth. This filament in the 

 wheat-plant is repeated many times, each filament rising from what 

 is called the axis (Fig. 3, p. 8). Now these cells multiply in at least 

 three different ways. 



First : They divide into two or more portions each portion 

 becoming a perfect cell, or one cell buds out, as it were, from another, 

 and this mode of cell growth is called exogenous, because the change 

 occurs outwardly. 



Secondly : Cells form within cells, and, the containing cell 

 bursting, its numerous contents each assume the functions as they 

 possess the structure of perfect cells. This is called the endo- 

 genous formation of cells, the change taking place from within. 



