An introduction to nature-study / by Ernest Stenhouse.

  • Stenhouse, E. (Ernest)
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to nature-study / by Ernest Stenhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/426 (page 4)
    will see a little curved rod. This is the radicle. Gently raise it with the point of your knife. Notice that the rest of the seed seems to consist of a green part, which is curled up. Uncoil the curls carefully. You find that they are two green leaves, fixed at the top of the radicle. These are the cotyledons. In the seed each cotyledon is first folded in two across the middle and then coiled up. Make a sketch showing the coils (Fig. 4). Can you see the plumule? It is just at the top of the radicle, where the cotyledons are fixed on. Plants are living things.—One of our foremost naturalists 1 tells us that when he goes out into the woods, or into one of those fairy forests which we call fields, he finds himself welcomed by a glad company of friends, everyone with something interesting to tell. Such a feeling would be quite impossible to one who did not vividly recognise the fact that plants are alive; for it is precisely this recogni- tion or its absence which makes the observation of the forms and habits of plants fascinating or the reverse. Let the Nature-Student, then, at the outset of his work, keep the idea of life inseparably bound up with his every thought about plants It may at first require a little effort, but before long it will enable him to understand how the friend- ship of the more silent half of animate nature may form one of the great pleasures of life. The study of seeds.—The manifestation of life is so striking, and the changes in form and size take place so rapidly, in the germination of seeds, that the study of plants cannot better be commenced than with this stage of their growth. The method has also the logical virtue of begin- ning at the beginning, or nearly so. These early changes can be well observed by taking various common seeds, soaking them in water until they are soft, and then allowing them to germinate in damp sawdust, 1 Lord Avebury, The Pleasures of Life (Macmillan).