247 
SECT. XXVIII. 
ON THE DISSECTION OF SEEDS. 
Hence the tall oak, the giant of the wood. 
Which bears Britannia’s thunders on the flood; 
The whale, unmeasur’d monster of the main, 
The lordly lion, monarch of the plain. 
The eagle soaring in the realms of air. 
Whose eye undazzled drinks the solar glare, 
Imperious Man, who rules the bestial crowd. 
Of language, reason, and reflection proud, 
With brow erect who scorns this earthly sod. 
And views himself “ the image of his God;” 
Arose from rudiments of form and sense, 
An embryon pointy or microscopic ens. 
Darwin. 
The general rule of dissecting seeds, even the most recent, is by 
putting them into warm water, in order to free them of their integu¬ 
ments, especially such as have hard ones. When the seeds have been 
somewhat softened, one of them is to be taken out of the water, and first 
divided into two equal parts by a transverse section, made from the front to 
the back, and the divided portions are to be again instantly thrown into 
water, that the plane of the section may freely imbibe it. Afterwards this 
softened plane is to be examined by a lens of moderate magnifying power, 
by which means a threefold difference is generally detected: for, first, the 
plane is manifestly divided, from one 'wall of the seed to the other, by a 
simple transverse chink containing no matter of a different colour within it: 
or, secondly, the plane is marked with a shorter transverse chink, or a 
roundish areola, in both which a foieign and different-coloured matter 
appears; and in this case the seed is safely pronounced to be albuminous, 
and to contain an embryo longer than half the albumen: or, thirdly, no 
vestige whatever of a chink or areola can be detected, but the plane appears 
very uniform and homogeneous; and then we may be very certain that 
either a very large fialse-monocotyledonous embryo constitutes the whole 
nucleus of the seed, as in Paullinia ; or that a minute embryo must remain 
