22 OUR WOODLAND TREES. 
already possessed — possessed not indeed in 
the way which appeals most powerfully to the 
human eye—as in the expanded form of stem, 
leaf, and blossom—but in the minutest form of 
incipient life. 
But this marvellous power, this setting in 
motion of the perfect and beautiful organization 
of the seed, is, in the Divine economy, and by the 
exercise of Divine wisdom, ordered only in its fit 
and proper season, and by the co-operation of 
other of the forces of Nature. Of these co- 
operating forces, and of the marvellous and beau- 
tiful results which they produce, we have not here 
to speak. Our immediate purpose is to explain 
—so far as explanation is possible—the position 
occupied by the seed when it has, in its perfected 
state, endowed with the vital principle of life by 
subjection to the mysterious process of fertiliza- 
tion, left the parent plant; but before it has— 
through the stimulation of its latent vitality 
by the active influence of external forces—been 
launched on its wonderful career of development. 
The perfect seed, then, in its quiescent state, 
may be said to consist of two distinct parts—a 
