648 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



BOTANY. « 



SEEDS: THEIR PRESERVATION AND GERMINATION. 



REV. L. J. TEMPLIN. 



In all the realm of nature there are few if any other objects that conceal so 

 many wonders or around which cluster so many interests as that of a perfect, 

 living seed. Though apparently possessing no more life than a grain of sand or 

 a small gravel, yet hidden within that lifeless exterior, and folded away in those 

 simple cerements, is a living germ, possessed of latent powers and energies, that, 

 when subjected to favorable conditions, and animated by the vital principle, will 

 develop a living, growing vegetable organism. Every seed is the product of a 

 plant and is the result of the fertilizing influence of the pollen on the ovules of 

 a flower. The parent plant has not only given life to each seed, but it has so 

 stamped on it the parent's nature and characteristics that the resulting plant must 

 resemble its parent in all essential particulars. 



It is true that each plant may vary slightly from its parents, in those qualities 

 that are not essential to specific existence, but these variations are always within 

 narrow limits with a general tendency to revert back to the parental form. 



I am aware that many able scholars and noted naturalists hold the opinion 

 that these variations may go on in a particular line until it results in the produc- 

 tion of a new species j but that any species has ever been produced by such va- 

 riation the proof is not forthcoming, although it has been ' ' sought for carefully 

 and (almost) with tears" by hundreds of the most careful observers and expert 

 investigators of the age. A seed is strictly the product of nature. It is inimita- 

 ble by art. With all his knowledge of the elements and his mastery over the 

 forces of nature, man cannot construct a seed. Men who seem ready to accept 

 the theory that living organisms may arise, spontaneously, from lifeless matter, 

 cannot, with all the materials of nature in their possession and all her forces at 

 their command, in a single case produce life from non-living matter. They 

 may manipulate, organize, and combine to the utmost of their skill, yet in the 

 absence of the living principle, which comes alone from a vital connection with a 

 previously living organism, no life will or can appear. Nothing short of a Divine 

 Giver of life could have originated the seed. The office of the seed seems to be 

 two-fold ; first to facilitate the dispersion of plants by the ease with which they 

 may be conveyed from one place to another; second, to perpetuate the species 

 by the number of their production and the facilities their forms offer for preserva- 

 tion from one season to another. 



