240 
SECT. XXVII. 
WHETHER THE FUTURE PLANT BE CONTAINED IN THE 
SEED. 
Lo! on each seed, within its slender rind. 
Life’s golden threads in endless circles wind; 
Maze within maze the lucid webs are roll’d. 
And, as they burst, the living flame unfold. 
The pulpy acorn , ere it swells, contains 
The oak’s vast branches in its milky veins; 
Each ravel’d bud, fine film, and fibre-line. 
Trac’d with nice pencil on the small design. 
The young Narcissus , in its bulk compress’d, 
Cradles a second nestling on its breast; 
In whose fine arms a younger embryon lies. 
Folds its thin leaves, and shuts its floret-eyes; 
Grain within grain successive harvests dwell, 
And boundless forests slumber in a shell! 
Darwin. 
Many philosophers, holding it to be incredible, that a plant, or even an 
animal, should be endowed with a power to produce its own likeness, have 
embraced an opinion that all the plants and animals that ever existed, or 
that ever can exist, were formed originally, not plants or animals, but em¬ 
bryos of those inclosed in an egg or seed, which when deposited in a proper 
nidus or matrix , grow up to a plant or animal, and then decay. And to 
account for future generations, it is held, that every embryo contains within 
it smaller embryos without end, like cups of different sizes cased one within 
another. 
That every seed contains an embryo-plant, is a valuable discovery in 
natural history; but that there is a decreasing series of embryos within 
every seed, is a mere conceit, assumed without the least appearance of 
truth. So far is it from holding true that plants within plants subsist in a 
seed without end, that even the single plant it contains is there in a very 
imperfect state. The plume and radicle alone subsist in it; and the other 
parts are produced in the course of growing. But let us give way to the 
supposition of an infinite series, to see what can be made of it. Writers 
