FUNDAMENTAL DEFINITIONS. 3 



B. Growth, the increase and development of the organs 

 of living things ; 



C. Reproduction, the power to generate a living body- 

 like the parent or parents that produced it. This living 

 body is at first a minute cell called an Embryo (Gr. em- 

 bryon, the rudiment of a living being). 



8. Plant defined. — A Plant is an organized body, feeding 

 on water, air, and earth by means of roots, stems, and 

 leaves, or parts equivalent to them, and reproducing its 

 kind by means of flowers or parts equivalent to them. 



The old definition of a plant — " an organic body destitute of sense 

 and spontaneous motion,'.' etc. — has long been discarded. The various 

 parts of plants perform the functions of animal organs. With some- 

 thing very much like cunning the Ply-Trap (Fig. 112), Nepenthes 

 (Fig. 113), and Sarracenia (Fig. 114) catch insects and digest them at 

 leisure. The Vallisneria flowers (Fig. 244) carry on as pretty a court- 

 ship as human lovers. The Cyclamen (Fig. 245), like our homely 

 Gooba pea, shows a mother's forethought in the care she takes of her 

 young; and the lower seaweeds (Figs. 11 to 13) swim about with an 

 apparently voluntary motion by which they are often mistaken for 

 animals. These phenomena no longer surprise us ; for 



9. The Primordial Cell, or life-cell, in both plants and animals, is 

 composed of the same materials and endued .with the same power of 

 self-motion ; diflFering, however, in food : the plant feeds on inorganic, 

 the animal on organic, matter (5, 53). 



10. Nomenclature. — In Botany, as in every other science, the 

 Nomenclature or Terminology — system of names or terms — is based on 

 the rule of the Latin Grammar, though the names may come from the 

 Greek or any other language. This method was adopted by scientists 

 because the Latin, being a fixed language, is not subject to change. 

 Scientific nomenclature is, therefore, a sort of universal speech, easy to 

 acquire, which saves the labor of translation into various tongues. It 

 is imperative that the student of any branch of science should master 

 the principles of its nomenclature, which are. few and simple. These, 

 with the Kules for Pronunciation, are given in Lesson XXXV. 



U. Sections. — Botanical Science has two Sections or departments: 

 Section I. Structtiral Botany. — This concerns the forms, functions, 

 and structure of organs. Its divisions are : 



A. Morphology (Organography), which treats of the outward form, 

 arrangement, and behavior of organs, whether as a whole in the plant 

 or as individuals ; 



B. Physiology, which treats of the functions of organs ; that is, of 

 the special work they do. These functions come under three heads : 



(1) Nutrition; (2) Reproduction; (3) Correlation, or those functions 

 by means of which external objects are brought into relation with the 

 plant, and by which it reacts upon them ; 



O. Phyioiomy (Histology), which treats of the anatomy of plants 

 and their tissues ; 



