Osborne^ on the Wheat Plant. 
Ill 
seeds^ whose roots and plumules had grown about half an 
inch^ into short glass-pointed tubes, with very small terminal 
apertures, adding to it a very little water ; I then suspended 
these tubes in jars full of water, covered with tinfoil; these 
I kept for ten days in a dark, warm cupboard. I now found 
that a large globule of a light brown matter had exuded, and 
was attached to the points of the tubes ; this I carefully re- 
moved, and made into a preparation capable of being examined 
with my " twelfth " object-glass. I now obtained some further 
insight as to the forms into which the fluid contents of seeds 
germinating are resolved ; from this and many other experi- 
ments, I have arrived at the conclusion, that the formative 
matter, at that stage immediately preceding actual cellulation, 
is composed as I shall now describe it. There is a very 
transparent glutinous matter, only to be traced at its edges, 
when floated out into distilled water or any clear fluid ; in 
this there is a large quantity of granules of a peculiar form 
(PI. V, fig. 32) ; with the sixth power they have an appearance 
similar to that of vibriones, but still being clearly of quite a 
different character. By the use of the twelfth power, with good 
illumination and a careful manipulation of the instrument, 
their peculiar form can be well made out. I call them " double 
ovate granules they seem to consist of two very minute 
oval vesicles, which have become united, or it may be of vesi- 
cles of that form, originally single, but which by a process 
analogous to that followed by some Desmidiece haYe become 
double; they have a molecular movement, but this is not 
universally the case, and I am not satisfied that it does not 
arise from their contact with other active molecular bodies. 
In addition to these double ovate granules, which I con- 
sider to be vesicular, there is a large quantity of some thick 
granular matter evidently made up of most minute atoms, 
the characters of which I cannot trace out ; there are also a 
great many true molecules in constant motion ; they are very 
similar to, but smaller than those I have often taken on 
glasses exposed to the atmosphere. 
By some curious law the double ovate granules voluntarily 
dispose themselves in a manner which, by leaving clear spaces 
between groups of them, gives the appearance of a somewhat 
vaguely defined cell -texture ; the molecular atoms, by as evi- 
dent a law, will be found to hold with regard to each other, 
as the rule, a relative distance so regular as to force upon me 
the conviction that it is in their very nature to resolve them- 
selves into certain set forms (PI. V, fig. 32) . 
I had observed that, whenever a lateral root commenced 
its growth on a plant in one of my stage tanks, there was 
