207 
SECT. XXIII. 
COMPARISON OF THE SEED WITH THE EGG. 
Then Nature’s births enclosed in egg or seed, 
From the tall forest to the lowly weed, 
Her beaux and beauties, butterflies and worms, 
Rise from aquatic to aerial forms. 
—-—So erst, as Egypt’s rude designs explain, 
Rose young Dione from the shoreless main ; 
Type of organic nature! source of bliss! 
Emerging beauty from the vast abyss! 
Sublime on chaos born, the goddess stood, 
And smiled enchantment on the troubled flood ; 
The warring elements to peace restored, 
And young Reflection wonder’d and adored. 
Darwin. 
From the accurate experiments and observations of Spallanzani it ap¬ 
pears, that in rush-broom (spartxtjm junceum), the very minute seeds 
were discerned in the pod at least twenty days before the flower was in full 
bloom; that is, twenty days before fecundation. At this time also the 
powder of the anthers was visible, but glued fast to their summits. The 
seeds however at this time, and for ten days after the blossom had fallen off, 
appeared to consist of a gelatinous substance. 
On the eleventh day after the falling of the blossom, the seeds became 
heart-shaped, with the basis attached by an appendage to the pod, and a 
white point at the apex; this white point was on pressure found to be a 
cavity including a drop of liquor. 
On the twenty-fifth day the cavity, which at first appeared at the apex, 
was much enlarged, and still full of liquor; it also contained a very small 
semi-transparent body of a yellowish colour, gelatinous, and fixed by its 
two opposite ends to the sides of the cavity. 
In a month the seed was much enlarged, and its shape changed from a 
heart to a kidney; the little body contained in the cavity was increased in 
bulk, and was less transparent and gelatinous, but there yet appeared no 
organization. 
