HOW PLANTS CAME TO DIFFER. 27 



tiny dry fruits, with small round seeds, which 

 fall on the ground unheeded ; while others have 

 brilliant red or yellow berries, or winged or 

 feathery seeds, especially fitted for special modes 

 of dispersion. In short, there are plants which 

 seem, as it v/ere, very low and uncivilised, while 

 there are others which display, so to speak, all 

 the latest modern inventions and improvements. 



The question is, How did they thus come to 

 differ from one another? What made them 

 vary in such diverse ways from the primitive 

 pattern ? 



In order to understand the answer which 

 modern science gives to this question, we must 

 first glance briefly at certain early steps in the 

 history of the process which we call creation or 

 evolution. 



The earliest plants, we saw, were in all pro- 

 bability mere tiny green jelly-specks, floating 

 free in water, and taking from it small quantities 

 of dissolved carbonic acid, which they manu- 

 factured for themselves into green living material 

 when sunlight fell upon them. Now we shall 

 have to consider another peculiarity of plants 

 (and of animals as well) before we can 

 thoroughly understand the first stage in the 

 upward process which leads at last to the pine 

 and the lily, the palm and the apple. 



Plants are made up of separate parts or 

 elements, known as cells, each of which consists 

 of a thin cell-wall, usually containing living 

 material. The very simplest and earliest plants, 

 however, consist of a single such cell apiece ; 



