GROWTH.
1481. Growth is none other than continued germination. The sap being polarized by the air becomes of necessity decomposed. One part evaporates as carbonic acid and water, the other coagulates into oxydized mucus or into cell-walls.
1482. Growth proceeds directly from the process of digestion and respiration, while its polar organs constantly remove further from each other.
1483. Properly speaking the digestive and respiratory processes are none other than growth, since both separate from each other. That, which originates between them, is the process of nutrition, the vascular system.
1484. Growth oscillates between the process of decomposition and that of fermentation; it is an uninterrupted fermentation.
FALL OF THE LEAF.
1485. If every pole of the plant has been perfected in an isolated manner, it has thus become identical with the air, and the aerial process ceases.
1486. With the cessation of the aerial process, the respiratory organ must also die off or perish.
1487. The decadence, or falling off, of the leaves is the result of the tension having been abrogated between them and the stem; it is a death by suffocation.
1488. The fall of the leaf therefore occurs in the autumn, or after the fruit is matured.