134 



A DISCOURSE 



BOOK II. knife from the top downwards, half way, and at a small distance from the 



bottom, upwards, the other half ; this, in more places, as the bulk of 

 the stem requires ; and if crooked, cut deep and frequent in the ham ; 

 if the gaping be much, fill the rift with a little cow-dung. Do this on 

 each side, and at spring, February or March : also, cutting oiF some 

 branches is profitable, especially such as are blasted, or lightning-struck : 



branches. These viscous seeds are washed by the rains, so that some of them are often 

 protruded to the lower side of the branches, where they grow. 



Some people are persuaded, that the sessile and flat funguses on trees, are morbid ex- 

 crescences ; but it is plain they are true species of those agarics which are furnished with 

 caps and stems, and grow on the ground, whose seeds falling on a moist tree, produce, as 

 it were, half caps without stems. That seeds are the eggs of plants, appears from hence, 

 that as every egg produces an offspring similar to the parent, so do the seeds of vege- 

 tables, and consequently, they are also eggs. The containing parts of a hen's egg are, 

 the shell, the external film or membrane, the internal membrane lying immediately under 

 the former, the chalazae, or membrane inclosing the yolk, twisted at the extremities. The 

 parts contained are, the air within the membranes at the obtuse end of the egg, the white, 

 the yolk, and the cicatricula, in the centre of which is the speck of life. When an egg is 

 set under the hen, after two days incubation, the speck of life becomes red, sends out 

 its blood-vessels through the yolk, and at last we find the whole chick is formed out of the 

 speck of life. The yolk becomes the secundines ; the white contributes to the nourish, 

 ment of the chick; and the two membranes become the amnion and chorion. A seed has 

 also a shell, external membrane or film, a membrane including the yolk, the yolk itself^ 

 and the point of hfe. In seeds, however, the white is wanting, there being no use for it, 

 as the moisture of the earth supplies its place, and nourishes the embryo of the plant. 

 Neither have the eggs of fishes any white, because they are always in the water. Wlien 

 the flower is going off, the seeds begin to swell, and on its outside there is seen a vesicle, 

 which is the amnion of Malpighi, furnished with an umbilical cord, or navel-string, which 

 is produced through the chorion to the opposite side of the egg. While with the egg the 

 amnion increaseth, on its top is observed another small body, which likewise increaseth 

 continually, till it has filled the whole chorion and egg ; and the amnion and the chorion are 

 turned into the external shell or coat of the seed. See Logan's Exper. 9, by which it 

 appears that the same changes are brought about in the seed as in the egg ; and therefore, 

 that the seeds are the eggs of plants cannot be doubted. That plants spring from the 

 yolk of the egg is farther confirmed by the lobes, which, when we speak of cows and 

 other similar quadrupeds, are nothing else than several secundines, always adhering to the 

 foetus, drawing their supply of fluids from the matrix, which fluids they prepare for the 

 nourishment of the tender foetus. That most plants have seminal leaves or lobes is very 

 well known. Now these seminal leaves once constituted the whole seed, except the 

 hilum, or little heart, in which is the point of life ; and these lobes prepare the nourish- 

 ment for the very tender plant, until it be able to strike root in the earth ; in the same 



