Offers a clue 

 to the condi- 

 tions of 

 existence in 

 other worlds. 



442 STUDIES IN SEEDS AND FRUITS 



minate after prolonged immersion in an atmosphere of nitrogen 

 or chlorine or in alcohol, would lack those special adaptations 

 to terrestrial life which give the appearance of fitness to the 

 typical organism. The variations of climate on our planet 

 merely concern the purely terrestrial characters of plants. The 

 seed often ignores them. Theoretically a seed should live for 

 ever ; but unceasingly subjected on the earth to the strain of 

 special conditions, its tenacious hold on life in any circumstances 

 is apt to be lessened, so that with us it evinces only the 

 tendency to immortality. It cannot be doubted, indeed, if 

 this point of view be correct, that seeds have in varying degree 

 undergone adaptations on the earth, and that a greater fitness 

 for the special terrestrial conditions has often become a source 

 of weakness in an organism generally adapted for existence in 

 the cosmos. 



In spite, however, of the disposition to yield to the adaptive 

 influences of terrestrial conditions, the seed still offers us the 

 only instance of a terrestrial organism that is non-terrestrial 

 in many of its potentialities. It seems to be the only clue 

 presented to us on our planet to the conditions of existence 

 in another world, a world such as the moon appears to be, 

 where the requisite conditions for plant-development beyond 

 the seed-stage, such as we know them, do not probably exist. 

 If we study the ways of the seed we may be able to learn 

 something of the nature of existence possible on the lunar- 

 surface ; and it is quite feasible that vegetable organisms in 

 what we term the seed-stage of their existence may be living 

 on the arid surface of that satellite, propagating themselves 

 perhaps by some means unknown to us. 



Although most of what is written above may be mere 

 fancy, ,it is a fancy that might stimulate investigation ; and it 

 should be remembered in this connection that the transference 

 of germs from one world to another is on this view far from 

 preposterous. De Maillet, when he promulgated this notion 

 about two centuries ago, made a wild guess ; but modern 

 investigators have independently advanced the same idea. In 



