Volume I Part 15 (1/2)
V. THE SEED.
I must once more desire the reader to take notice that, under the four sections already defined, the morphology of the plant is to be considered as complete, and that we are now only to examine and name, farther, its _product_; and that not so much as the germ of its own future descendant flower, but as a separate substance which it is appointed to form, partly to its own detriment, for the sake of higher creatures. This product consists essentially of two parts: the Seed and its Husk.
I. THE SEED.--Defined 220
It consists, in its perfect form, of three parts 222
/# These three parts are not yet determinately named in the text: but I give now the names which will be usually attached to them.
A. _The Sacque_.--The outside skin of a seed 221
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B. _The Nutrine_.--A word which I coin, for general applicability, whether to the farina of corn, the substance of a nut, or the parts that become the first leaves in a bean 221
C. _The Germ_.--The origin of the root 221
II. THE HUSK.--Defined 222
Consists, like the seed when in perfect form, of three parts.
A. _The Skin_.--The outer envelope of all the seed structures 222
B. _The Rind_.--The central body of the Husk. 222-235
C. _The Sh.e.l.l_.--Not always sh.e.l.ly, yet best described by this general term; and becoming a sh.e.l.l, so called, in nuts, peaches, dates, and other such kernel-fruits 222
The products of the Seed and Husk of Plants, for the use of animals, are practically to be ma.s.sed under the three heads of BREAD, OIL, and FRUIT.
But the substance of which bread is made is more accurately described as Farina; and the pleasantness of fruit to the taste depends on two elements in its substance: the juice, and the pulp containing it, which may properly be called Nectar and Ambrosia. We have therefore in all four essential products of the Seed and Husk--
{249} A. Farina. Flour 227
B. Oleum. Oil 229
C. Nectar. Fruit-juice 229
D. Ambrosia. Fruit-substance 230
Besides these all-important products of the seed, others are formed in the stems and leaves of plants, of which no account hitherto has been given in Proserpina. I delay any extended description of these until we have examined the structure of wood itself more closely; this intricate and difficult task having been remitted (p. 195) to the days of coming spring; and I am well pleased that my younger readers should at first be vexed with no more names to be learned than those of the vegetable productions with which they are most pleasantly acquainted: but for older ones, I think it well, before closing the present volume, to indicate, with warning, some of the obscurities, and probable fallacies, with which this vanity of science enc.u.mbers the chemistry, no less than the morphology, of plants.
Looking back to one of the first books in which our new knowledge of organic chemistry began to be displayed, thirty years ago, I find that even at that period the organic elements which the cuisine of the laboratory had already detected in simple Indigo, were the following:-- {250}
Isatine, Bromisatine, Bidromisatine; Chlorisatine, b.i.+.c.hlorisatine; Chlorisatyde, b.i.+.c.hlorisatyde; Chlorindine, Chlorindoptene, Chlorindatmit; Chloranile, Chloranilam, and, Chloranilammon.
And yet, with all this practical skill in decoction, and acc.u.mulative industry in observation and nomenclature, so far are our scientific men from arriving, by any decoctive process of their own knowledge, at general results useful to ordinary human creatures, that when I wish now to separate, for young scholars, in first ma.s.sive arrangement of vegetable productions, the Substances of Plants from their Essences; that is to say, the weighable and measurable body of the plant from its practically immeasurable, if not imponderable, spirit, I find in my three volumes of close-printed chemistry, no information what ever respecting the quality of volatility in matter, except this one sentence:--
”The disposition of various substances to yield vapour is very different: and the difference depends doubtless on the relative power of cohesion with which they are endowed.”[67]
Even in this not extremely pregnant, though extremely {251} cautious, sentence, two conditions of matter are confused, no notice being taken of the difference in manner of dissolution between a vitally fragrant and a mortally putrid substance.