ccounts given by botanists of the stages
of growth in each of these parts of the treasury, they never say of what
use the guardian is to the guarded part, irrespective of its service to
man. The mechanical action of the husk in containing and scattering the
seeds, they indeed often notice and insist on; but they do not tell {221}
us of what, if any, nutritious or fostering use the rind is to a chestnut,
or an orange's pulp to its pips, or a peach's juice to its stone.

4. Putting aside this deeper question for the moment, let us make sure we
understand well, and define safely, the separate parts themselves. A seed
consists essentially of a store, or sack, containing substance to nourish a
germ of life, which is surrounded by such substance, and in the process of
growth is first fed by it. The germ of life itself rises into two portions,
and not more than two, in the seeds of two-leaved plants; but this
symmetrical dualism must not be allowed to confuse the student's
conception, of the _three_ organically separate parts,--the tough skin of a
bean, for instance; the softer contents of it which we boil to eat; and the
small germ from which the root springs when it is sown. A bean is the best
type of the whole structure. An almond out of its shell, a peach-kernel,
and an apple-pip are also clear and perfect, though varied types.

5. The husk, or seed-vessel, is seen in perfect simplicity of type in the
pod of a bean, or the globe of a poppy. There are, I believe, flowers in
which it is absent or imperfect; and when it contains only one seed, it may
be so small and closely united with the seed it contains, that both will be
naturally thought of as one thing only. Thus, in a dandelion, the little
brown grains, which may be blown away, each with its silken parachute, are
every one of them a complete husk and {222} seed together. But the majority
of instances (and those of plants the most serviceable to man) in which the
seed-vessel has entirely a separate structure and mechanical power, justify
us in giving it the normal term 'husk,' as the most widely applicable and
intelligible.

6. The change of green, hard, and tasteless vegetable substance into
beautifully coloured, soft, and delicious substance, which produces what we
call a fruit, is, in most cases, of the husk only; in others, of the part
of the stalk which immediately sustains the seed; and in a very few
instances, not properly a change, but a distinct formation, of f