SEED. 
ishment is conveyed through a placental canal ; 
and the seed, or the fruit which contains it, 
when fully formed and in possession of all the 
organism and substance requisite for indepen- 
dent existence and subsequent reproduction, 
drops from the placental attachment, and there- 
fore from the plant, and ever after retains a scar 
or hilum at the point where the attachment 
existed. 
The forms, surfaces, and composition of seeds 
themselves, and of the carpel envelopes which 
enclose them, are exceedingly diversified, and 
exhibit the most minute and comprehensive 
adaptation to the nature and habitats of their 
respective plants, and afford thousands of most 
exquisite displays of the wisdom and goodness of 
the Creator. All have an organization and a 
constitution exactly suited to their own repro- 
ductiveness, and most, at the same time, have a 
prolificity and consistence and composition ex- 
pressly adapted to serve as food or medicine to 
all the higher orders of animals ; while some, in 
| one and the same process, contribute their peri- 
| carps to the feeding of animals, and acquire pre- 
paration and excitement for their own office of 
reproduction. Starch, sugar, gum, oil, proteina- 
ceous principles, alkaloids, and multitudes of 
| peculiar compounds, are so wonderfully diversi- 
fied in the different species, too, as, in all the 
endless diversities of climate, soil, form, and 
habit, to achieve most nicely the purposes of 
maintaining vitality, resisting injurious attacks 
of insects, and making preparation, by chemical 
change and progress, for both the extraneous 
office of affording food to animals and the in- 
trinsic function of developing the embryo of the 
future plant. Coverings of amazing variety 
of kind, and all perfect and beautiful, protect 
the interior substance and organisms from the 
injurious effects of excessive heat or cold, or of 
undue dryness or moisture ; and many of these, 
at the same time, constitute either food to ani- 
mals or nourishment to the germinating seeds. 
See the articles FRurr and Peritcarp. The con- 
trivances for dispersing seeds, too, so that the 
plants which arise from them may find fresh 
soil to nourish them and ample space to grow in, 
are numerous and admirable. “Not only are 
the winds and the waters and animals put in 
requisition, and unconsciously employed in the 
operation of sowing and planting, but the seeds 
themselves are endowed in many cases with 
certain mechanical properties which aid their 
dispersion. Thus the awn of an ear of barley is 
so sensible to moisture, that it lengthens in 
damp and shortens in dry weather ; and by this 
alternate extension and contraction, aided by 
the short and thick set prickles by which it is 
serried, it will in the course of a few mornings 
drag away the seed to which it is attached to 
some distance from its parent stalk. Thus, again, 
the seeds of the thistle and dandelion have a 
species of downy wings attached to them, by 
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means of which they float through the air, and 
are carried by the wind to great lengths. And 
thus, too, the pods of the broom and furze are 
furnished with an elastic spring, which, on being 
acted on by the heat, forcibly ejects the seed, 
and with a considerable report, to a distance 
from the spot. ‘Who,’ says Sir J. EH. Smith, 
‘bas not listened in a calm and sunny day to the 
crackling of furze bushes, caused by the explo- 
sion of these little elastic pods, or watched the 
down of innumerable seeds floating on the sum- 
mer breeze, till they are overtaken by a shower, 
which, moistening their wings, stops their fur- 
ther flight, and at the same time accomplishes 
its final purpose by immediately promoting the 
germination of each seed in the moist earth? 
How little are children aware as they blow away 
the seeds of the dandelion, or stick burs in sport 
upon each other’s clothes, that they are fulfilling 
one of the great ends in nature?’ The ocean it- 
self serves to waft the larger kinds of seeds from 
their native soil to far distant shores. While in 
ordinary cases, also, plants drop and disperse 
their seeds in dry weather only,—which is just 
the kind of weather most favourable to its suc- 
cess, for the seed, according to the farmer’s 
adage, ‘loves a dry bed, —there are some plants, 
natives of arid deserts, which act according to a 
different economy. Thus, the cup of one plant 
of the desert has springs to close in dry weather, 
and to open only in the coming of moisture. 
Thus, also, the seed-vessel of the rose of Jericho 
is rolled by the winds along the wilderness until 
it meets with a moist spot, and then, but not till 
then, it opens and parts with its seed. How 
wonderful all this arrangement and contrivance! 
Here is not the foot print of blind chance, but 
the finger of God.” ' 
Seeds which have lost their vitality through age 
or bad keeping are sometimes doctored by chemi- 
cal appliances, and brought into the market under 
the name and with the appearance of perfectly 
fresh seeds. A report upon enquiries into adul- 
terations by a Committee of the House of Com- 
mons, a good number of years ago, stated that 
the “old seed of white clover was doctored by first 
wetting it slightly, and then drying it with fumes 
of burning sulphur, and that red clover-seed had 
its colour improved by shaking it in a sack with 
a small quantity of indigo; but this being de- 
tected after a time, the doctors then used a pre- 
paration of logwood, fined by a little copperas, 
and sometimes by verdigris, thus at once 
improving the appearance of the old seed, and 
diminishing, if not destroying, its vegetative 
power, already enfeebled by age. Supposing 
that no injury had resulted to good seed so pre- 
pared, it was proved that, from the improved 
appearance, its market price would be enhanced 
by this process from 5s. to 25s. a hundred weight. 
But the greatest evil arose from the circumstance 
of these processes rendering old and worthless 
seed equal in appearance to the best. 
One wit- | 
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