Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/23

8 The castle was formerly the seat of the Glucksburg dukes, and King Christian, who belongs to that house, resumes, therefore, an old family possession. Let us hope that he will soon be able to enjoy it. At present the Prussians are masters at Glucksburg, and they are "men in possession" of whom it is very difficult to get rid. author:Burton Samuel Blyth

we compare human life with plant life it is astonishing to what an extent their vital phenomena resemble each other. All the stages of human life, of infancy, youth, manhood, and old age, are well-defined in plant life. About this there can be no mistake. The life of man compared with that of a plant! Are then the ties which unite us to plants so intimate? Yes! far more intimate than is commonly believed! To convince my readers of this, to strengthen their love of nature, and to make to them the plant-world more interesting, is my object in thus comparing our own life-changes with those of plants.

From the abundance which nature furnishes, we shall select—not a tree, for that sometimes outlives successive generations of men; besides, there is something strong, as well as enduring about a tree;—no! we must give the life-history of something in the vegetable kingdom far more frail and perishable; the biography, for example, of an annual plant, one of those flowers which adorn the garden or the landscape for a few months or weeks, and then pass away for ever, to be replaced by other floral forms as the seasons change, equally graceful, beautiful, and perishable.

.—This commences with the first movement of re-awakening life in the seed, and closes with the fall of the cotyledons or nursing leaves. If we plant the seed of such an annual in a suitable soil when Spring and warm weather come it will begin to germinate, or its life-movements will re-commence. It first attracts the moisture from the soil to itself. This produces the softening and swelling of its outer covering, which is finally ruptured by the growth of the embryo in its interior, which sends downwards through the torn seed-cover a little rootlet, and upwards a young stem, to which are attached the first pair of leaves. These leaves, which are thick and fleshy, form the great bulk of the seed, and are called by botanists cotyledons: they are, in reality, the nursing leaves of the young embryo. We call them nursing leaves because they perform a duty quite peculiar to themselves, and therefore different to the work done by the other leaves which subsequently appear above them. They are thick and fleshy because they contain a store of starch, provisions elaborated by the parent plant which produced the seed, and whose last vital movements were expended in making this food for its offspring! On this store of starch, the infant plant, with its little root, and its stem bearing towards its summit the first true aerial leaves, is at first wholly parasitic, until it is sufficiently grown to attract from the earth and atmosphere a sufficiency of food for its support, and can do without the nursing leaves. It is quite obvious, therefore, that our plant must pass gradually from the stage of parasitism to that of independency.

During the first stages of its life, our little annual attracts oxygen from the air; this enters the nursing leaves, and through its influence, the starch which they contain is converted into a soluble sugary gum called dextrine, which the water absorbed during germination conveys to the rootlets in the soil, and to the young leaves forming in the atmosphere. Thus nourished, both grow, and the young leaves speedily expand and take the form peculiar to the plant.

With the progress of growth, the nursing leaves also undergo a great change in their appearance. Lifted above the ground and exposed to the light of the sun, they speedily expand and take a green leaf-like colour, becoming so much enlarged that they present quite a different appearance to that which they had when folded together and enveloped by the seed-skin. There can be no doubt that this change of colour enables them to discharge their nutritive duties more effectively. Now as the first rootlets and aerial leaves are formed principally out of the nutritive matter with which the cotyledons are furnished, they become gradually atrophied, or waste away and shrivel up, as the nutritious store in them disappears, and finally fall from off the stem. With the full development of the aerial leaves and the fall of the nursing leaves, the first stage of vegetable life,, is closed.

It is thus that Nature, like an affectionate mother, cares for the life of all her plant-children, and gently weans them, first gradually altering their organism so as to adapt it to a change of diet, and then by degrees withdrawing the sustenance afforded by the nursing leaves. Surely, nothing can be more perfect or natural than this analogy between these early stages of plant life and those of human life!

.—This is the proper vegetable stage, throughout which the plant is wholly independent of the nursing leaves, and draws its nutritious material entirely from