THE LIFE OF A SEED. 
397 
contribution to the life-history of the seed may do somewhat 
towards rendering the matter more clear, if only by pointing 
out the pitfalls engendered by the use of erroneous ex- 
pressions. 
Like infants who at birth are provided with a double set of 
teeth, ready to emerge from the recesses of the jaw-bone when 
occasion demands, so, the flower has hardly assumed even 
infantile proportions, hardly completed the number of its com- 
ponent parts, ere indications of provision for the future are 
manifested. Long before the blossom has arrived at maturity, 
when it is so small even as hardly to deserve the name of bud, 
even so soon does careful Nature begirt to make provision for 
the perpetuation of the plant. It forms no part of our purpose 
to trace how the flower grows and how its component parts 
manifest themselves in successive order ; suffice it here to say, 
that scarcely is the future seed-case or pistil apparent in the 
embryo bud, than traces of the seeds appear likewise. It may 
not sound very romantic to trace the origin of a lovely rose or 
a giant oak to a pimple ; but, whether or no, no higher origin 
can be assigned to them, or indeed to any living creature what- 
soever. Even the pimple is not the actual commencement, 
being, as Mr. Herbert Spencer would call it, an aggregate of the 
second order, in other words, a mass of cells so arranged as to 
form a little roundish prominence or tubercle. This, then, must 
be our starting point in tracing the history of the seed. Up to 
a recent period it was considered that these seminal tubercles 
invariably originated from the margins of the carpellary leaves, 
from the edges, that is to say, of those leaf-like organs which, 
when placed in apposition or united together, constitute the 
ovary. Now, however, it is pretty generall}^ conceded that the 
ovules or young seeds may be found not only on the edges, but 
on the surfaces of the leaf-organ (carpel), and in other cases 
from a little prolongation of the stem of the plant, which thrusts 
itself up into the cavity of the carpels, and thus arise the different 
modes of “ placentation ” mentioned in the text books. With this 
matter we need not here concern ourselves ; let us return to our 
pimple, which, to be niore precise, we may call in future by its 
technical name of nucleus.^ As it grows in size it generally 
happens that a ring of cellular tissue forms around its base, 
this ring elongates into a tube or sheath, leaving a little opening 
at the top, the foramen, the purport of which will be apparent 
hereafter. In some cases a second, or even a third sheath forms 
gradually over the central nucleus, which thus becomes concealed 
by these sheaths or coats of the ovule, as they are termed. 
* Not to he confounded with the nucleus of the cell, — quite a different thing-, 
though, unfortunately, called by the same name. 
