1473. The ovary, by its own power, is in a condition to draw towards it the chemical saps from out the stem, and as it were by its own heat to thrust new buds from its leaf-ribs, namely, the seed-pellicles or testæ. It has not, however, strength sufficient to put forth also the leaf-work, namely, the embryo, upon the apex of the seed-shell. It requires for this purpose the stimulus of the floral pollen. If the plant is very rich in sap, the ovary is so likewise, and converts itself into fruit or sarcocarp. As a rule, therefore, trees only bear a crop of fruit. If also the impregnation is less perfect, the force of the sap continues to remain inherent in the ovarian leaves; they become rich in sap, fleshy, and likewise fruity in character; trees, therefore, with imperfect or separated blossoms, as the Amentaceæ, Urticaceæ, Euphorbiaceæ, Papilionaceæ, Terebinthaceæ, and Rosaceæ, usually bring forth a crop of fruit.
1474. A stronger degree of refinement appears in these fruit-saps than in the saps of the stem, because corolla and seeds range closer to each other. They are therefore more varied and richer in substance. The fruit-substances range usually upon the side of the water or the salts, while those of the seed range upon the side of the earth or the Inflammables. The substances of the seed are flour and oil, those of the fruit sugar and acids; the former supplies food, the latter drink.
1475. Seed and ovary stand therefore in antagonism, like earth and water.
3. Function of the Seed.
GERMINATION.
1476. The seed is the plant contracted upon its centre, it is the heavy mineral mass, which can only undergo changes by the operation of the other elements, like as it arrived only at completion by the operation of the floral pollen. This acts upon it when within the dry ovary, like the water and oxygen in the dry earth. These changes are its development or germination.
1477. All the planetary elements belong to germination, and to growth the Cosmical also with all its actions. To germination belongs earth, water, and air; to growth, light, heat, and gravity; with all the four mineral classes also, such as earth, salt, Inflammable, and metal. The plant contains silicious and calcareous earth, salts, coal with sulphur, and lastly, iron.
1478. Germination is the disjunctive emergence wrought by means of moisture, heat and oxydation in the processes of decomposition and fermentation. No seed germinates in irrespirable kinds of air.
1479. The cotyledons or seed-lobes are the synthesis of the two processes; they are at once root and leaf, therefore resolvable into mucus, and may yet become green.
1480. In germination the elemental bodies of the root-and stalk-polarity directly emerge; the mucus or the flour separates into alcaline gum, that seeks the darkness, and into acid sugar, which elevates itself into the illuminated air.