25 
PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRIES. 
SECT. VI. 
I. OF THE USES OF THE SEVERAL PARTS OF THE SEED. 
Come, ye soft Sylphs! who sport on Latian land; 
Come, sweet lip’d Zephyr, and Eavonius bland! 
Teach the fine seed, replete with life, to shoot 
On Earth’s cold bosom its descending root; 
With pith elastic stretch its rising stem. 
Part the twin lobes, and fan th’ aspiring gem. 
Darwin. 
The Pericarp is usually represented by Botanists as solely destined for 
protection, whereas its chief and primary use is the nourishment of the young 
seeds. Hence the Pericarp, or column in its centre, serves the office of pla¬ 
centa to the embryos, the seeds being, as we saw before, attached to them 
by a thread, or pedicel, which bears an analogy to the umbilical chord of 
the foetus, so little do even the subordinate parts of creation lose by compa¬ 
rison with the higher. 
This chord is very visible in the bean and nut, and indeed exists in every 
plant; but, as the embryos increase in growth, this attachment is dissolved, 
and vegetable parturition may now be said to be performed: and as the chord 
becomes in the child a ligament,* so the pod assumes a new appearance, 
and becomes a dry hush, and its valves separating, the seeds are dropped 
from within its bosom, which may not be unaptly styled a second birth . 
* It becomes the suspensory ligament of the liver. 
H 
