When these little seeds at last find a good resting place, what do you think happens to them? They grow into new plants, of course. But how does this come about? How does a seed turn into a plant?
I could hardly expect you to guess this, any more than I could have expected you to guess how the apple flower changes into the apple fruit. I will tell you a little about it; and then I hope your teacher will show you real seeds and real plants, and prove to you that what I have said is really so.
Of course, you believe already that I try to tell you the exact truth about all these things. But people far wiser than I have been mistaken in what they thought was true; and so it will be well for you to make sure, with your own eyes, that I am right in what I say.
Fig. 84
If you should cut in two the seed of that beautiful flower the garden peony, and should look at it very closely through a good magnifying glass, you would find a tiny object such as you see in the half seed shown in this picture (Fig. [84]). Both your eyes and your glass need to be very good to show you that this little object is a baby peony plant. Fig. [85] gives the little plant as it would look if taken out of the seed.
Every ripe seed holds a baby plant; and to become a grown-up plant, it needs just what boy and girl babies need,—food and drink and air.
But shut up so tight in its seed shell, how can it get these?
Well, in this peony seed its food is close at hand. It is packed away inside the seed, all about the little plant. In the picture (Fig. [84]), everything except the little white spot, which shows the plant, is baby food,—food that is all prepared to be eaten by a delicate little plant, and that is suited to its needs just as milk is suited to the needs of your little sister or brother.
