Outlines of Creation

by Elisha Noyce

Few of this tribe have anything like true woody texture, except their highest order, the ferns, which form some of the most beautiful objects in the vegetable world. Few of the family of acrogens are of much direct use to man, the mushroom tribes are very generally eaten where they abound, the lichens of the arctic regions form the food of the reindeer (the greatest friend of man in these cold climes) as well as, in part, the food of man himself; but although these lowly plants serve man but little, directly, there is not a shadow of doubt that they have as important an office to fulfil as any other family or tribe of organised creatures, whose purpose may meet the eye more plainly. For all the members of creation form, as it were, the links of one great chain, and were but one removed, though it might perchance be only some poor weed or lowly moss, yet might it cause the whole to be annihilated; for certain earthy matters enter into the structure of all plants, and it appears to be the wonderful office of some of these lowest tribes of plants to prepare this earthy matter for its reception into the systems of higher organisms, for as silica is one of the primitive rocks of the earth and is only found in fragments, from the largest to the sand on the sea-shore, which is nothing but a collection of minute fragments of quartz worn small by attrition, yet a grain of sand is a gigantic mass of rock in comparison with the thin porous hollow shells of the Diatomaceæ, &c., and by far too large to be absorbed or dissolved so as to be taken into the systems of other plants that may require it, which plants would cease to exist if this earth were not thus prepared for them; now these are the corn-bearing plants, the most useful to the animal world, and upon which it in reality depends for existence. Moreover the whole of the mould in which the higher orders of plants grow, is formed by the decomposition of the more humble grades, especially the lichens, which first take possession of the surface of bare rocks and stones, and furnish by their death food fit for the sustenance of those which follow them. Like the higher orders of vegetation, these minute plants excrete oxygen, and thus in the ocean may supply this vital element for the respiration of the various corresponding minute animal organisms which inhabit the depths of the sea and which cannot come to the surface to get it, so that the two thus supporting each other, form food for all the higher marine animals, which are finally eaten by man. So that upon some of these minute and apparently useless creatures hang the lives and well-being of many of the most important vegetables and animals.

Dr. Lindley divides the acrogens into the following orders:—

1. Algæ (Algals), including Sea-weeds, &c.

The Algæ include the lowest of all the vegetative organisms, the "Protophytes" (first plants). These have no individual parts, but consist of living cells, propagating by sub-division or by the union of two cells into one, causing the formation of "nuclei" or smaller cells within them, each of which becomes a parent cell after the rupture of the cell-membrane which contained them.

Dr. Carpenter, in his "History of the Microscope," says:—"The life-history of one of these uni-cellular plants in its most simple form, can scarcely be better exemplified than in the Palmoglœa macrococca, one of those humble forms of vegetation which spreads itself as a green slime over damp stones, walls, &c. When this slime is examined with the microscope, it is found to consist of a multitude of green cells, each surrounded by a gelatinous envelope; the cell, which does not seem to have any distinct membranous wall, is filled with granular particles of a green colour, and a 'nucleus' may sometimes be distinguished through the midst of these. When treated with tincture of iodine, however, the green contents of the cell are turned to a brownish hue, and a dark-brown nucleus is distinctly shown. Other cells are seen, which are considerably elongated, some of them beginning to present a sort of hour-glass contraction across the middle; in these is commencing that curious multiplication by duplicative subdivision which is the mode in which increase nearly always takes place throughout the vegetable kingdom."

Fucus Vesiculosus.

The higher tribes of Algæ embrace the sea-weeds; these are for the most part broad, leaf-like expansions of "thallus," composed of cellular tissue, they sometimes grow to an enormous length. Humboldt mentions the sea-grass as extending for miles, and forming continuous extensions of two or three hundred feet, and the Macrocystis pyrifera attains to the length of more than a thousand. The common Bladder-wrack (Fucus vesiculosus) was formerly much used to procure soda from, its ashes containing a considerable quantity, it is also used for manure; the Laminaria digitata is eaten under the name of "tangle," and a nutritious jelly is made from the "Carigeen moss" (Chondrus crispus).

2. Characeæ (Charas).
Charas.	These are a kind of fresh-water Algæ, composed of tubes of cellulartissue; they are peculiar, from the fact that the spores of the planthave cilia, giving to them the powers of motion and enabling them toswim away and spread the plant afar off. It is in the Charas that thepeculiar circulation of the granules of "endochrome" called "cyclosis"is best seen.