Proserpina Volume I Part 15

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, Bichlorisatine; Chlorisatyde, Bichlorisatyde; 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.

It is still more curious that when I look for more definite instruction on such points to the higher ranks of botanists, I find in the index to Dr.

Lindley's 'Introduction to Botany'--seven hundred pages of close print--not one of the four words 'Volatile,' 'Essence,' 'Scent,' or 'Perfume.' I examine the index to Gray's 'Structural and Systematic Botany,' with precisely the same success. I next consult Professors Balfour and Grindon, and am met by the same dignified silence. Finally, I think over the possible chances in French, and try in Figuier's indices to the 'Histoire des Plantes' for 'Odeur'--no such word! 'Parfum'--no such word.

'Essence'--no such word. 'Encens'--no such word. I try at last 'Pois de Senteur,' at a venture, and am referred to a page which describes their going to sleep.

Left thus to my own resources, I must be content for the present to bring the subject at least under safe laws of nomenclature. It is possible that modern chemistry may be entirely right in alleging the absolute ident.i.ty of substances such as alb.u.men, or fibrine, whether they occur in the animal or vegetable economies. But I do not choose to a.s.sume this ident.i.ty in my nomenclature. It may, perhaps, be very fine and very instructive to {252} inform the pupils preparing for compet.i.tive examination that the main element of Milk is Milkine, and of Cheese, Cheesine. But for the practical purposes of life, all that I think it necessary for the pupil to know is that in order to get either milk or cheese, he must address himself to a Cow, and not to a Pump; and that what a chemist can produce for him out of dandelions or cocoanuts, however milky or cheesy it may look, may more safely be called by some name of its own.

This distinctness of language becomes every day more desirable, in the face of the refinements of chemical art which now enable the ingenious confectioner to meet the demands of an unscientific person for (suppose) a lemon drop, with a mixture of nitric acid, sulphur, and stewed bones. It is better, whatever the chemical ident.i.ty of the products may be, that each should receive a distinctive epithet, and be asked for and supplied, in vulgar English, and vulgar probity, either as essence of lemons, or skeletons.

I intend, therefore,--and believe that the practice will be found both wise and convenient,--to separate in all my works on natural history the terms used for vegetable products from those used for animal or mineral ones, whatever may be their chemical ident.i.ty, or resemblance in aspect. I do not mean to talk of fat in seeds, nor of flour in eggs, nor of milk in rocks.

Pace my prelatical friends, I mean to use the word 'Alb' for vegetable alb.u.men; and although I cannot without pedantry avoid {253} using sometimes the word 'milky' of the white juices of plants, I must beg the reader to remain unaffected in his conviction that there is a vital difference between liquids that coagulate into b.u.t.ter, or congeal into India-rubber.

Oil, when used simply, will always mean a vegetable product: and when I have occasion to speak of petroleum, tallow, or blubber, I shall generally call these substances by their right names.

There are also a certain number of vegetable materials more or less prepared, secreted, or digested for us by animals, such as wax, honey, silk, and cochineal. The properties of these require more complex definitions, but they have all very intelligible and well-established names. 'Tea' must be a general term for an extract of any plant in boiling water: though when standing alone the word will take its accepted Chinese meaning: and essence, the general term for the condensed dew of a vegetable vapour, which is with grace and fitness called the 'being' of a plant, because its properties are almost always characteristic of the species; and it is not, like leaf tissue or wood fibre, approximately the same material in different shapes; but a separate element in each family of flowers, of a mysterious, delightful, or dangerous influence, logically inexplicable, chemically inconstructible, and wholly, in dignity of nature, above all modes and faculties of form.

Notes

[1] At least, it throws off its flowers on each side in a bewilderingly pretty way; a real lily can't branch, I believe: but, if not, what is the use of the botanical books saying "on an unbranched stem"?

[2] I have by happy chance just added to my Oxford library the poet Gray's copy of Linnaeus, with its exquisitely written Latin notes, exemplary alike to scholar and naturalist.

[3] It was in the year 1860, in June.

[4] Admirably engraved by Mr. Burgess, from my pen drawing, now at Oxford.

By comparing it with the plate of the same flower in Sowerby's work, the student will at once see the difference between attentive drawing, which gives the cadence and relation of ma.s.ses in a group, and the mere copying of each flower in an unconsidered huddle.

[5] "Histoire des Plantes." Ed. 1865, p. 416.

[6] The like of it I have now painted, Number 281, CASE XII., in the Educational Series of Oxford.

[7] Properly, Florae Danicae, but it is so tiresome to print the diphthongs that I shall always call it thus. It is a folio series, exquisitely begun, a hundred years ago; and not yet finished.

[8] Magnified about seven times. See note at end of this chapter.

[9] American,--'System of Botany,' the best technical book I have.

[10] 'Dicranum cerviculatum,' sequel to Flora Danica, Tab. MMCCX.

[11] The reader should buy a small specimen of this mineral; it is a useful type of many structures.

[12] LUCCA, _Aug. 9th, 1874._--I have left this pa.s.sage as originally written, but I believe the dome is of acc.u.mulated earth. Bringing home, here, evening after evening, heaps of all kinds of mosses from the hills among which the Archbishop Ruggieri was hunting the wolf and her whelps in Ugolino's dream, I am more and more struck, every day, with their special function as earth-gatherers, and with the enormous importance to their own brightness, and to our service, of that dark and degraded state of the inferior leaves. And it fastens itself in my mind mainly as their distinctive character, that as the leaves of a tree become wood, so the leaves of a moss become earth, while yet a normal part of the plant. Here is a cake in my hand weighing half a pound, bright green on the surface, with minute crisp leaves; but an inch thick beneath in what looks at first like clay, but is indeed knitted fibre of exhausted moss. Also, I don't at all find the generalization I made from the botanical books likely to have occurred to me from the real things. No moss leaves that I can find here give me the idea of resemblance to pineapple leaves; nor do I see any, through my weak lens, clearly serrated; but I do find a general tendency to run into a silky filamentous structure, and in some, especially on a small one gathered from the fissures in the marble of the cathedral, white threads of considerable length at the extremities of the leaves, of which threads I remember no drawing or notice in the botanical books. Figure 1 represents, magnified, a cl.u.s.ter of these leaves, with the germinating stalk springing from their centre; but my scrawl was tired and careless, and for once, Mr. Burgess has copied _too_ accurately.

[13] Learn this word, at any rate; and if you know any Greek, learn also this group of words: "[Greek: hos rhiza en ge dipsosei]," which you may chance to meet with, and even to think about, some day.