134 
INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON PLANTS. 
prolonged in proportion to the higher temperature of their native climes. Still 
more rarely do plants from such regions ripen their seeds or fruit : the flowers, 
when they do appear, generally being abortive. This is unquestionably owing to 
the want of a due degree of heat to evaporate their unnecessary inhalations, and 
mature their young shoots. The judicious culturist will, however, in some 
measure supply this lack of temperature, by modifying and diminishing the 
communication of moisture. If only a sufficient quantity of water is administered, 
or allowed to be received, to enable them, with the existing degree of temperature, 
to harden and partially desiccate their annual growth, there will never be any 
scarcity of flowers after they have attained a proper age and size. 
Flowers and fruits appear to be not only the means which Nature has provided 
for maintaining and increasing the species, but, by assisting materially in abstract- 
ing the aqueous fluids of perennial plants, they prepare them for resuming a similar 
office in the next season. This is clearly proved by the circumstance of exotic 
plants continuing to blossom annually after they have once been induced so to do, 
provided external conditions remain suitable. An extraordinary profusion of 
flowers may, and does, by engrossing too large a quantity of sap, diminish fertility 
in the subsequent year ; an insufficiency of pulp leaving the young shoots in a 
similar state to that caused by a superabundance of fluids — immaturity. But this 
extreme degree of exhaustion operates very transiently, as the plant becomes 
equally prolific after the lapse of another season, if auspicious for the particular 
kind of maturation required. 
Reasoning from similar premises, it is highly probable that seeds, especially 
those of annuals, will vegetate and fulfil the cycle of their destined offices much 
sooner, with greater certainty, and with less superfluous development of leaves 
and branches, if obtained from the plants which yield a great number of seeds, and 
from which, consequently, they are sparingly supplied with fluids ; than from such 
as grow rankly and luxuriantly, at the expense of flowers and seed. Inde- 
pendently of its being an axiom in vegetable physiology, that the peculiar charac- 
teristics of a plant are transmitted to its progeny, there are cogent reasons, derivable 
from analogy, why this supposition should prove well-founded ; one of the chief 
of which is, that seeds, when, by keeping, they lose part of their constituent 
moisture, are rendered more immediately and profusely productive. If, therefore, 
as in the case above cited, this desiccation can be performed naturally, while the 
seeds are attached to their parent plant, it follows that the consequence will be in 
all respects similar, and yet more satisfactory. The question is certainly deserving 
of the strictest investigation. 
( To be continued.) 
