602 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Nature lias one immutable law, and that is, that like produces 

 like, and therefore perfect seed is more likely to produce perfect 

 fruit than immature seed. 



Professor Nash — God, as seen in liis works, wonderfully pro- 

 vides for the preservation and growth of the young; and tliis is 

 hardly less remarkable in plants than in animal life. 



The young of animals, whether human or sub-human, either 

 di-aw their nutriment from the parent, or receive it at the home 

 of an instructive parental Providence. 



Every living thing, from man downwards, unless wilfully per- 

 verting the laws of its nature, is literally re-creating itself into a 

 living posterity. Every thing that has life, dies, in order that it 

 may live; dies, as to its own individuality, that it may live on 

 and ever in derived individualities. In animals and plants this 

 is alike observable. 



The young animal derives its life-blood, its very being, from 

 the parent. It grows by the self-denying, self-exhausting care of 

 the parent. It is so with the young plant. The parent plant 

 exhausts itself in the maturing of its seed. In that seed is the 

 young plant and its food, till it can put forth its vital energies and 

 gather food for itself. 



A chestnut falls to the ground, its shell is full of starch, that 

 starch is insoluble; wet or dry, it will remain essentially matured 

 through a long W'inter. Embedded in the starch is a young 

 chestnut tree. The starch, encased as it is in a shell slightly 

 pervious to water, protects the young tree. It is not food for the 

 young tree, because it cannot be dissolved; and no plant can ab- 

 sorb food except in solution. Diastase, by the genial warmth of 

 spring, is formed in the chestnut. This diastase converts the starch 

 into sugar. It now dissolves ; it feeds the young tree ; the young tree 

 grows; it thrusts its radicle downwards, and its plumula upwards. 

 Very soon it shows the form of a tree, with roots, stem, branches and 

 leaves. Now it has not changed its form, it has only enlarged itself so 

 that we can see it. It was as perfect a tree while yet in the shell as 

 at fifty years old, bait too small to be seen by the naked eye. But 

 out of what does it grow ? First, out of the food prepared for it by 

 the parent tree, and then from food obtained from the air and from 



