Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 Excerpt: ...mushroom, or by the thousands of seeds contained in the fruit capsule of an orchid. Separation, Rejuvenation, and Multiplication of the individual are accordingly the essential requisites of reproduction. These requirements are fulfilled by plants in the most varied manner. Each great division of the vegetable kingdom has adopted its own special method; and each family and genus, or even the different species, are characterised by some peculiar feature of their manner of reproduction. Systematic botany is so essentially based upon the different development of the reproductive organs and their functions, that it consists for the greater part of special descriptions of the processes of reproduction in the vegetable kingdom. Numerous and varied as these processes are, they are in reality but modifications of two different and distinct modes of reproduction. The simpler of these, or VEGETATIVE Reproduction, consists in the formation of cells or cell bodies which, after their separation from the parent plant without undergoing any further change, either germinate at once, or develop into new organisms after a period of rest. This mode of reproduction, in which the growth and development of the parent plant are directly continued, is also distinguished as MONOGENETIC, Vegetative, or Asexual reproduction. In Sexual Reproduction, the second of the two modes of propagating vegetable life, two kinds of reproductive cells are first formed, but neither is directly capable of further development, and both perish in a very short time, unless opportunity is given for their fusion with each other. Not until one cell (the female) has fully taken up and become inseparably united with the other cell (the male), does it acquire the capacity of development and growth. This mode...
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