The Intimate Causes of Old Age. 209 



from the products which have issued from them has pro- 

 duced the stalk proper and leaves. Immediately another 

 class has, in like manner, given rise first to the bud, then 

 to the gorgeous blossom with its stamens and pistils. 

 Fertilization follows in-its timed order; and later another 

 class of cells matures as seed. 



It has been held that these latter cells in some manner sap 

 and eviscerate, so to speak, the cells of every other tissue of 

 the plant, and thus sapping them of their life elements, or 

 germs, condense these latter in the seed, where it may 

 long lie dormant, yet capable of producing another plant ; 

 and that the parent plant, thus sapped and eviscerated, 

 dies naturally, its life being virtually taken away and 

 carried forward to the seed for another year. 



The observed fact that the stalk and lower leaves of the 

 poppy remain green until late in the season, if the flower 

 stalk is nipped, has been regarded as evidence of this 

 view ; namely, that the phenomena of its growth, maturity, 

 and dry death stand for a development, successively, of one 

 class of cells after another, from the seed around to the 

 seed again ; that the plant dies when the germs of life 

 have left the stalk and leaf and passed upward to their 

 final lodgment in the seed. 



It is an easy theory, easily derived, easily argued, and 

 •falls in superficially well with certain aspects of the cell 

 doctrine and with current theology. 



But it carries a great and vicious untruth ; vicious in 



