Farming in Devon and Cornwall. 
511 
of starch into sugar, it is seen now to include most elaborate 
chemical changes in which all classes of food materials are 
concerned. We know now that the food of the embryo of a 
plant is as complex as that of an animal ; that besides starch, 
it may comprise very many kinds of carbohydrates ; that 
nitrogen-containing matter or proteid is an absolutely essential 
constituent of it, occurring in some form in all seeds ; and that 
very many plants accumulate various fats or oils for the same 
nutritive purpose. We know that, however varied are the 
accumulations of these reserve food-stuffs in different seeds, all 
contain proteid, with either carbohydrate, or fat, or both. We 
see, too, that a complex process of digestion of these reserves of 
food takes place during the germination — that the long-known 
transformation of starch is but one among many similar changes, 
all leading to the supply of material to the young plant in forms 
which it can absorb and use. The conversion of starch into 
sugar is indeed at once the simplest and most straightforward 
of all the transformations which take place. W e find, again, that 
diastase, the longest-known of the vegetable ferments, is but 
one of a large number upon whose activity the germinative 
changes depend. 
The embryo then finds itself provided for by its parent — 
shielded from the adverse influences of its environment, if such 
there be, by being wrapped up in a strong protective integu- 
ment ; situated in the midst of plenty of nutritious material, 
and furnished in itself with all needful powers of calling these 
supplies into active use as soon as changes in its environment 
supply to it the necessary stimulus to its development and 
growth. The whole process of germination, indeed, is one 
which is strictly comparable with that which goes on constantly 
in the animal body — viz. digestion, and the absorption of the 
products of digestion. 
J. R. Green. 
FARMING IN DEVON AND CORNWALL. 
TRAVELLERS, who form their opinions of local agriculture from 
the hurried glimpse obtained from railway or other carriage 
windows, would arrive at very opposite conclusions about the 
farming of Devonshire according as they travel by one or other 
of the great lines of railways which traverse that county. 
The Great Western line, after crossing the eastern border a 
few miles below Wellington, traverses for the greater part of its 
