Nature's Serial Story

by Edward Payson Roe

She did enjoy aiding Mr. and Mrs. Clifford in overhauling the seed-chest, however. This was a wooden box, all tinned over to keep out the mice, and was divided into many little compartments, in which were paper bags of seeds, with the date on which they were gathered or purchased. Some of the seeds were condemned because too old; others, like those of melons and cucumbers, improved with a moderate degree of age, she was told. Mrs. Clifford brought out from her part of the chest a rich store of flower seeds, and the young girl looked with much curiosity on the odd-appearing little grains and scale-like objects in which, in miniature, was wrapped some beautiful and fragrant plant. "Queer little promises, ain't they?" said the old lady; "for every seed is a promise to me."

"I tell you what it is, Amy," the old gentleman remarked, "this chest contains the assurance of many a good dinner and many a beautiful bouquet. Now, like a good girl, help us make an inventory. We will first have a list of what we may consider trustworthy seeds on hand, and then, with the aid of these catalogues, we can make out another list of what we shall buy. Seed catalogues, with their long list of novelties, never lose their fascination for me. I know that most of the new things are not half so good as the old tried sorts, but still I like to try some every year. It's a harmless sort of gambling, you see, and now and then I draw a genuine prize. Mother has the gambling mania far worse than I, as is evident from the way she goes into the flower novelties."

"I own up to it," said Mrs. Clifford, "and I do love to see the almost endless diversity in beauty which one species of plants will exhibit. Why, do you know, Amy, I grew from seeds one summer fifty distinct varieties of the dianthus. Suppose we take asters this year, and see how many distinct kinds we can grow. Here, in this catalogue, is a long list of named varieties, and, in addition, there are packages of mixed seeds from which we may get something distinct from all the others."

"How full of zest life becomes in the country," cried Amy, "if one only goes to work in the right way!" Life was growing fuller and richer to her every day in the varied and abounding interests of the family with which she was now entirely identified.

"Webb," his mother asked at dinner, "how do you explain the varying vitality of seeds? Some we can keep six or eight years, and others only two."

"That's a question I am unable to answer. It cannot be the amount of material stored up in the cotyledons, or embryo seed leaves, for small seeds like the beet and cucumber will retain their vitality ten years, and lettuce, turnip, and tomato seed five or more years, while I do not care to plant large, fleshy seeds like pease and beans that are over three years old, and much prefer those gathered the previous season. The whole question of the germinating of seeds is a curious one. Wheat taken from the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy has grown. Many seeds appear to have a certain instinct when to grow, and will lie dormant in the ground for indefinite periods waiting for favorable conditions. For instance, sow wood-ashes copiously and you speedily have a crop of white clover. Again, when one kind of timber is cut from land, another and diverse kind will spring up, as if the soil were full of seeds that had been biding their time. For all practical purposes the duration of vitality is known, and is usually given in seed catalogues, I think, or ought to be."

"Some say that certain fertilizers or conditions will produce certain kinds of vegetation without the aid of seeds—just develop them, you know," Leonard remarked.

"Develop them from what?"

"That's the question."

"Well, I think the sensible answer is that all vegetation is developed from seeds, spores, or whatever was designed to continue the chain of being from one plant to another. For the life of me I can't see how mere organic or inorganic matter can produce life. It can only sustain and nourish the life which exists in it or is placed in it, and which by a law of nature develops when the conditions are favorable. I am quite sure that there is not an instance on record of the spontaneous production of life, even down to the smallest animalcule in liquids, or the minutest plant life that is propagated by invisible spores. That the microscope does not reveal these spores or germs proves nothing, for the strongest microscope in the world has not begun to reach the final atom of which matter is composed. Indeed, it would seem to be as limited in its power to explore the infinitely little and near as the telescope to reveal the infinitely distant and great. Up to this time science has discovered nothing to contravene the assurance that God, or some one, 'created every living creature that moveth, and every herb yielding seed after his kind.' After a series of most careful and accurate experiments, Professor Tyndall could find no proof of the spontaneous production of even microscopic life, and found much proof to the contrary. How far original creations are changed or modified by evolution, natural selection, is a question that is to be settled neither by dogmatism on the one hand, nor by baseless theories on the other, but by facts, and plenty of them."