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the: story or the: oak tre:e: 
production, in Nature, means reproducing or creating 
others like yourself, whether you be a tree or a stalk of 
wheat or an Easter lily. 
In the last chapter, on cells, we asked, 
“What does the cell do when the time comes for it to 
multiply ?” 
The answer was, 
“It divides in two ” 
But we left another question unasked, 
“How does the cell know when the time has come for 
it to multiply? 
The ameba knows because it is getting too big; its 
growth is inconvenient to its simple structure, and it 
must check growth by splitting in two. In one-celled 
creatures like the ameba, division always makes two 
creatures where there has been one, but in a many-celled 
form like the flower, cell-division does not make two 
flowers, it just makes more cells for the one flower so 
it can grow bigger and brighter. The flower is higher 
in the scale of life than the ameba, it is composed of 
thousands of cells, and because it is so formed, a special 
thing has to happen before it can give birth to a new 
flower. Indeed, this special thing has to happen to a rose 
or a lion or a pussycat or a human being before they 
can make two of themselves. Before it can divide the 
