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address a number of scholars. Of course, I may be permitted, before such an 

 intelligent class of men as are here, to be a little more technical than I would be if I 

 were addressing pupils of say 12 to 15 years of age : but even before you, I shall try 

 to escape being too technical for I believe, that has been the great trouble in the 

 past in relation to the teaching of science. Men that have undertaken it have paid 

 too much attention to the incomprehensible technical terms sometimes used, so that 

 students and the public are apt to go away thinking that science can only be studied 

 by 'those who make it a sj)ecial work. Now the subject that you have set apart for 

 me to discuss is one that until within the last few years very little was known of. 

 But the discovery of the miscroscope and afterwards the simplyifying of the manu- 

 facture of it has placed it within the power of neaily all persons to be able to possess 

 such an instrument. In fact, you can get a miscroscope now for some $17 or $18 

 that will magnify up io 600 diameters. This is a high power, and will show all the 

 things and far more than what I intend to speak about this afternoon. Here, at the 

 very outset, let us try and locate where these plants are in the plant kingdom. When 

 we look abroad we find there are two great classes of plants. There is a class that 

 flowers and a class that does not. With those that flower we are all familiar; but 

 it is of these obscure forms which do not flower that a great many persons are ignor- 

 ant, and up to the last few years even botanists pushed them aside, 

 saying that their life history was too complicated for the ordinary 

 student. But now, you will find that the study of these obscure forms 

 is becoming far more atti-active to the students of plant life. I know in my 

 experience as a teacher of science there is no subject that the student likes to hear 

 discussed with better relish than what relates to the fungi or these forms of flower- 

 less plants. Among these flowerless plants you find such forms as the ferns, the 

 mosses and the sea weeds, and what 1 have called here the fungi. The fungi, then, 

 belong to the flowei'less plants. What makes the great difference between the flow- 

 ering and the flowerless plants, aside from the great external characteristics that 

 present themselves the moment you look at them, is this fact: that the flowering 

 plant arises from seeds, while the flowerless plant rises from spores. ISTow, what is 

 the difference between a seed and a spore ? Here (pointing to the diagram) I 

 have outlined some figures to show that difference. A seed, as a general 

 thing, is lai'ge. It is readily seen with the naked eye. It has a distinct, covering, 

 and contains an embryo — a miniature plant. Sometimes the covering is very thick 

 and much developed, but when the seed is surrounded by proper conditions it will 

 grow and develop, and finally become a plant like that which bore it. Then, again, 

 when it commences to grow, it always grows from a particular part. You would 

 not find it growing in this seed of wheat at one end and in another seed at the 

 other ; but in all the grains of wheat you find that the tiny rootlet, the radicle, will 

 start from a particular end. When it grows it assumes that form of plant life that 

 we are all familiar with, bearing leaves and stalks, and green colouring matter. Now 

 let us look at the spore. In the first place, you cannot see it. We have to get art to 

 give us help here, and by means of a microscope we see this tiny microscopic thing 

 called a spore. The protoplasm is surrounded by a very thin membrane. We do 

 not find a thick case there as an external covering. Sometimes it is naked, and is 

 then merely a clump of protoplasm (a jelly-like substance, the physical basis of life). 

 We find when we look into it no embryo, as we see in the seed. When it begins to 

 grow you cannot tell where it is going to grow from. It may be on the right side 

 or left side, or underside or the upper side. There is no definite point of growth, as 

 in the case of a seed. Then, having germinated it begins to develop a peculiar 

 series of thread-like structures. As it grows the difference between it and a flower- 

 ing plant widens, just as much as the mushroom widens from the rose, the rust on 

 wheat from the plant upon which it grows. So you have these four points of dis- 

 tinction between a seed and a spore : the seed large, with a good covering, with an 

 embryo, and growing from a distinct part ; the spore minute, thin covering, no 

 embryo, and indefinite growth. When we consider these fungi — this great compre- 

 hensive group, in which we find so many of the parasitic plants — we find plants that 



