VEGETABLE DISSEMINATION. 507 



BOTANY. 



VEGETABLE DISSEMINATION. 



REV. L. J. TEMPLIN. 



Whoever looks into the vegetable world for the first time with an intelligent 

 eye and a thoughtful and inquiring mind will be forcibly struck with the mani- 

 festations of design that meet him on every hand. The wise adaptation of means 

 to ends and the beautiful harmony that appears in all departments of organic 

 nature naturally lead the unbiased mind to the inference that, behind and be- 

 neath all this order and harmony, originating, upholding and directing them, 

 there is, and of necessity must be, an all comprehending intelligent power. Pro- 

 bably in all the realm of organic nature there is no more manifest exhibition of 

 wise adaptation of means to the accomplishment of worthy purposes than is seen 

 in the various methods employed for the dispersion and dissemination of the dif- 

 ferent species of plants. This field of research furnishes so many evidences of 

 design, and so much of variety and excellence that it seems difficult if not impos- 

 sible to shut out the conviction that some intelligent designer must have been 

 employed in planning a scheme that has so many excellences to commend it to 

 the enlightened judgment. To attribute all this to chance is to invest chance 

 with the attributes and acts of the Deity, and simply changes the name of this 

 great first cause. But in the sense in which this term is generally used the as- 

 sumption is absurd, as, in that sense chance is nothing and consequently can do 

 nothing. Turning our attention to the subject of the dissemination of plants, we 

 find Nature employing various methods that are not confined to any particular 

 order or class of plants. Considering a plant in its relation to the world at large 

 as well as to its own species, its whole purpose in life seems to be to propagate 

 its own species, and disseminate its progeny as extensively as possible under its 

 surrounding conditions. The spreading of plants from the original locality is 

 accomplished not only in a great variety of ways, but also with a great diversity 

 of degrees of rapidity. 



The method by which the offspring is carried the least distance from the 

 parent plant, and, consequently, in which the dissemination is the slowest, seems 

 to find illustrations in those cases in which the young plant starts as a sucker or 

 offshoot directly from the base or collar of the parent plant. In this process 

 adventitious buds are formed at or just beneath the surface of the ground which 

 push up new stems into the air, and from the subterranean parts of these, new 

 roots are sent out into the soil, thus enabling the young plant to draw its nour- 

 ishment from soil and air independently of the parent plant and even to survive 



