The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.
Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists,
of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to
place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more
unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and
trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for
insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of
plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the
explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally
small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by
which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are
provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and
these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment
in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed
coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and
may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of
plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie
until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or
scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists
to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths,
have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and
when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful
vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to
conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of
fact, it remains wholly unsolved.
This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we
have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific
path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on
vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our
cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the
"ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in
which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all
their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are
the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of
storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of
storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed
back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it
may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself.
For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much
more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned
to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it
quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from
the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed
mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.
The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which
nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a
thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in
the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter
belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the
former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years,
to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at
least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for
their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which
these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate
after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or
fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable
circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have
had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is
merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old
when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that
no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its
exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better
protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable
whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better
chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of
Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.
Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and
Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they
remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt
admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply
on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which
he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere
implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian
wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English
"dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial,
says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers,
which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if
the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more
or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed
for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil
exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered
with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to
show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain
dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house
erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they
may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed,
than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built
dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of
this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was
erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic
household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But
they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they _do_
follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.
The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements:
"Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost
indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very
extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon
after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at
Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man,
together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!)
at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus
lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance
connected with the case was, that _the raspberry seeds were recovered from
the stomach_ (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society,
where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is
circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism,
provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and
the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and
conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt
would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.
But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running
comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred
years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of
raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at
Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials
kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one
were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in
one." This statement must be received _cum grano_. The Romans never used
coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a
battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there
was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil,
taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he
might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface
soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a
very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice
particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in
the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to
posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed
for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with
that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were
recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away
the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as
well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted
in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."
All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody)
about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified
record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The
stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved
seeds, as well as the _obolus_ in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be
found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had
withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the
surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have
obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for
belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."
From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin
mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in
England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea
of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably
not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the
case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the
distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such
discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound
tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface
soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the
"Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted
there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain
buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any
other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the
wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to
wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen
trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with
or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the
bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance
of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on
seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version
of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.
Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times
alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United
States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of
fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other
circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from
the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is _Erechthites
hieracifolia_, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its
seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is
not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds,
and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have
survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the
burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if
any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these
heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops
of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are
no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find
their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The
seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be
those _grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the
southern hemisphere_, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in
which they so promptly make their appearance.
Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the
deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the
heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of
growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of
the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of
two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished
from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks,
to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has
only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of
a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory
must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in
its place.
The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of
nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of
the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil
where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but
from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those
taking advantage of environing conditions, just as _Bacteria_ or
_Torultz_ spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots
of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring
directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living
organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable
depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the
burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when
there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from
the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken
their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural
"gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account
for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick
bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in
this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when
white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds
of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing
in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any
length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that
when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are
effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie
grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and
the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No
seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found
had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most
powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make
their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation
did on the earth, not from seed, but from preëxisting vital units or
primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
necessary conditions for their development and growth.
The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the
explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed
to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform
no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is
generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two
seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous
impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate
seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a
thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird
eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also
gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or
the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the
gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are
utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply
corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which
involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding
power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The
seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the
natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or
macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the
gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this
pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the
gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic
outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its
passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner
pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the
appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual
observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone
slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with
the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.
The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits
they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass
hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of
the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or
small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp
and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and
some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would
otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds
even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating
bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any
length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds
have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the
character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting
mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and
comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds
have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of
crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their
crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly
fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the
bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.
These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor
Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or
chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more
than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their
digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a
"natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are
"the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of
loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation
of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are,
relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit
without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the
transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any
number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some
of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it
as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.
Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds
other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we
have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents,
mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their
dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All
this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated
agencies will account for more than a very few of the many
well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be
given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had,
or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of
seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our
late civil war, a little leguminous plant (_Lespedeza striata_) sprang
up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it
came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of
the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage
plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this
plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the
phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities
in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general
appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not
particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one
southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they
naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in
those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not
abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had
the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive
legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.
It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have
suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth,
as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long
been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the
southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions
prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added
to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat,
and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the
South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And
it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or
thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by
war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible,
vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared
in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the
South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of
Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern
states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither
winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds,
quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and
wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other
plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those
favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different
organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce
their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending
on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic
examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until
the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of
life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we
have named.
This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on
"conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced
soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates,"
"_molecules organiques_," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated
life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic
theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in
developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or
dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical
conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play
of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the
only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what
"molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived
from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine
two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection
with matter--_molar_ motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass,
and _molecular_ motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its
unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a
collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a
mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more
accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In
other words, it is simply a _process_ or _mode_ of action, and stands in
about the same relation to matter as _growth_ does to a living plant or
tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
physical hypothesis of life.
But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
local fern (_Schizoea pusilla_) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it
will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants
of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any
known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is
not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric,
hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all
vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at
high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or
another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the
respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond,
the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine
mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that
governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified
manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our
globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the
appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for _Bacteria_ in
the blood, _Torulæ_ in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological
cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable
"unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant
forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of
centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of
affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis,
because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but
let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational
life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force,"
or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable
to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they
absurdly use these terms.
It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this
question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has
seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird
theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due
east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their
respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for
this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow
the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and
changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current
theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse
directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic
plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the
"war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely
relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones,
and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real
causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific
mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the
habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are
reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such
vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more
common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we
must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which
compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing
conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we
shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general
vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have
been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same
climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern
localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and
growth of local vegetations.
And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their
seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening
regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on
these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same
vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital
units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere
determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital
resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural
seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it
as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are
given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and
not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural
chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is
likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether
any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth
of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of
soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by
judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible
failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify
experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important
subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or
less useful to man.
But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories.
As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of
nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search
out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets
of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is
no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting
life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact
inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in
fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation,
they _might_ produce life _de novo_.[13] But the most daring physicist
would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his
knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to
"molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon
such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.
It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs
in the appearance and geographical distribution of _fungi_, as universally
obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it
may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between
certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive
manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in
assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of
fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in
classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature
as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and
other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more
necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are
essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine.
Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to
obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular
form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will
make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce
them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying
about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the
necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the
development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to
burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions
to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has
commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater
part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of
moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on
which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been
found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to
certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition
of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for
their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come
from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper
nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress
from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of
grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common
disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption
and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially
disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no
mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they
develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit.
To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the
different species of _Mucor_, for instance--for disgusting offal over
decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher
degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute
creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the
testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts,
etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid
of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the
spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds,
go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts,
apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their
depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of
beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently
select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand
the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological
direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the
conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the
environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving
atmosphere--the "_pater omnipotens Æther_" of Virgil, "descending into the
bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great
himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things
of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that
myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a
cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the
poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father Æther," and the earth as
his "joyous spouse." But life, with its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and
swift," has reached its highest conceptions in the mind of the poet, not
in the speculations of the scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from
many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a
Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass,
staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a
Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of
"molecular machinery" by the scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its
manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe
of all-potential matter and motion!
Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the
spores of the large puff-ball (_Lycoperdon giganteum_), as well as those
of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose methods
of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced artificially. But
the process by which their production is thus effected, is more properly a
natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says
(quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and
fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse
of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue
productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they
cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these cases, but the
conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded by the branches
of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became favorable for the
development of truffle "germs," and they made their appearance just as
mushrooms do in caves and other places, where artificial beds are made and
chemically balanced for their development and growth. And the reason why
they disappeared, after a period of ten or fifteen years, was simply
because the proper nutriment of the soil was exhausted, and not in
consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the growing trees. One
uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of this much-coveted
fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions obtain, they
_appear_, and wherever these conditions fail, they _disappear_,
notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the
soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of
truffle (_Tuber æstivum_) appears under beech trees, another form (_Tuber
macrosporum_) under oak trees, and still a third form (_Tuber brumale_)
under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change in soil
conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among oaks,
produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one
amounting to a specific difference in variety.
The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple
one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of
horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under
cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent
over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due
time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the
ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that
governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is,
whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth.
In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to
come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in
its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let
the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one
as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led
Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point
in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be
seen by the required telescope.
Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores,
says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept
dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate
plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in
early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early
summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection,
the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods
to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case
of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as
were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous
era. These primordial germs, or the _ZRA_ of the Bible genesis, must have
preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first
spore-bearing cryptogam.
M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the
great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds
at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen
oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different
conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of
oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other.
All these experimental results, and many others we might give in
connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of
the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as
all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their
development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter
fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this
connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the
case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and
remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the
micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own
parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant
from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether
parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely
occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life,
than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past
springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay"
spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was
endowed from the beginning.
But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the
seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never
could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to
produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No
distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a
stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the _first_
fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders,
divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the
mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what
we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit
comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the
depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress
of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged
condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, _Nature_, as we
half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her
solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that
ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white
radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and
all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her
baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no
idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and
choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the
field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above
her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every
breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all
proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all
life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive,
soul-endowed man.