GERMINATION OF THE SEED. 
99 
to the autumnal blasts, and even the fruits themselves, becoming a mass of de- 
cayed matter. Were this appearance of decay and death now presented to us for 
the first time, how gloomy would be the prospect ! How little should we expect 
the return of life, and beauty, and fragrance ! No power short of Omnipotence 
could effect this ; it is indeed a miracle ! But we are so accustomed to these 
changes, that, " seeing, we perceive not ;" we think not of the mighty Being who 
produces them; we call them the operations of nature ; but what is nature, or the 
I'aios of nature, other than manifestations of Almighty power ? The word nature, 
in its original sense, signifies born, or produced ; — let us, then, look on nature as a 
creation, and beware of yielding that homage to the creature which is due to the 
Creator. The skeptic may talk with seeming rapture of the beauties of nature, 
but cold and insensible must be that heart, which, from the contemplation of tha 
earth around, and the heavens above, soars not to Him, 
"The mighty Power from whom these wonders are." 
How impressively is the reanimation of the vegetable world urged by St. Paul, 
as an argument to prove the resurrection from the dead! The same power, which 
from a dry, and apparently dead seed, can bring forth a fresh and beautiful plant, 
can assuredly, from the ruins of our mortal frame, produce a new and glorious 
body, and unite it to the immortal spirit by ties never to be separated ! Leaving 
the external organs of the plant, we are now to enter the inner temple of nature, 
and to examine into those wonderful operations by which vegetable life is called 
into action and sustained. 
114. Germination. — ^Tlie process of the shooting forth of the 
new plant is called germination. The principle of life contained 
in the seed does not iisuallj become active until the seed is placed 
in circumstances favorable to vegetation. When committed to 
the bosom of the earth, its various parts soon begin to dilate 
by absorbing moisture. Chemical action then commences , 
oxygen from the air unites to the carbon of the seed and carries 
it oif in the form of ca/rhoniG acid gas. As the carbon of the 
cotyledons by this process continues to diminish, and oxygen 
is produced in excess, a sweet, sugar-like substance is formed ; 
this being conveyed to the embryo, it is by its 
new nourishment kindled into active life ; from 
this period we may date the existence of the 
young plant. The embryo bursts through its in- 
teguments, which dissolve by their loss of carbon ; 
the radicle shoots downward, and i\iQ plume rises 
upward. We then say the seed has come up. 
Fig. 119 represents a young dicotyledonous plant, with its 
radicle, a, developed ; its plume, h, issuing as a bud from the first 
node of the axis, is yet scarcely perceptible ; its cotyledons, c c, 
appear in the form of large, succulent seed-leaves. The radicle 
seeks in the soil nourishment for the future plant, and to fix it 
firmly in the earth. It always takes a downward course, in whatever situation 
the seed may have been placed in the ground. A Botanist once planted in a yen 
six acorns, with the radicular points of their embryos upward. At 
the end of two months, upon removing the earth, he found that all F'?- 1^'*. 
the radicles had made an angle, in order to .reach downward. 
Fig. 120 is a representation of a germinating seed of the Mirahilis 
(four-o'clock) ; it will be seen that the radicle, a, has made nearly a 
right angle in turning downward ; the plume is not developed. Place 
114 Germination— Effect of oxygen— Of the loss of carbon- Direction of the radicle— Describe th« 
tjperinaent with acorns — Describe Fig. 120. 
