The Plants

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Review of Reviews Company, 1902 - 218 páginas
 

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Página 9 - Solomon's botany is lost, in which he spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall !3 The cedar we know, but what is the hyssop of the royal botanist?
Página 118 - ... point against them the pollen masses gum themselves to it naturally and come readily out of the sacks as you withdraw the pencil. In the same way, when the bee presses them with his head the pollen masses stick to it and he carries them away with him as he leaves the flower. At first, the pollen masses stand erect on his forehead, but as he flies through the air they dry and contract so that they come to incline forward and outward. By the time he reaches another plant they have assumed such...
Página 5 - Allen specially states that he has made " the study of plants a first introduction to the great modern principles of heredity, variation, natural selection, and adaptation to the environment.
Página 117 - The honey is in the spur, n ; the pollen-masses are marked a ; their gummy base is at r ; the stigma at st. and appearance from the other two, and usually hangs down in a very conspicuous manner. There are no visible stamens, to be recognised as such ; but the pollen is contained in a pair of tiny bags or sacks, close to the stigma. It is united into two sticky club-shaped lumps, usually called the pollen-masses (Fig. 22). In other words, the orTHE STORY OF THE PLANTS.
Página 5 - BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. PREFACE. IN this little volume I have endeavoured to give a short and succinct account of the principal phenomena of plant life, in language suited to the comprehension of unscientific readers. As far as possible I have avoided technical terms and minute detail, while I have tried to adopt a more philosophical tone than is usually employed in elementary works. I have treated my readers, not as children, but as men and women, endowed with the average...
Página 55 - ... to which they are often subject. After every great storm, as we know, big oaks and pines may be seen uprooted by the power of this invisible but very dangerous enemy. The root, however, does not serve merely to anchor the plant to one spot, and secure it a place in which to grow and feed ; it also drinks water. The hairs and tips of the root absorb moisture from the soil ; and this water circulates freely as sap through the entire plant, dissolving and carrying with it the starches and other...
Página 14 - ... female. Each seed is thus the product of a separate father and mother. Plants are of many kinds, and we must inquire by and by how they came to be so. Plants live on sea and land, and have varieties specially fitted for almost every situation. Plants have very varied ways of securing the fertilisation of their flowers, and look after the future of their young, like good parents that they are, in many different manners. Plants are higher and lower, exactly like animals.
Página 53 - They grow, on the whole, out of the air, not, as most people seem to fancy, out of the soil. Yet you must have noticed that farmers and gardeners think a great deal about the ground in which they plant things, and very little, apparently, about the air around them. What is the reason for this curious neglect of the real food of plants, and this curious importance attached to the...
Página 11 - In such cases the plant usually makes its blossom very attractive with bright-coloured petals, so as to allure the insect, while it repays him for his trouble in carrying away the pollen by giving him in return a drop of honey. The bee or butterfly goes there, of course, for the honey alone, unconscious that he is aiding the plant to set its seeds; but the plant puts the honey there in order to entice him against his will to transport the fertilising powder from flower to flower.
Página 76 - In the thread-like pond-weeds the two uniting cells are practically similar. They are not distinguished as male and female. Neither of them is larger or smaller than the other ; neither of them is more active or more vigorous than its consort. But in the higher plants a marked difference invariably exists between the two cells that join to form the new individual — a difference of kind ; we have sex now appearing.

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