Page 53 - My FlipBook

ing place within him, the morphology of matter, ceases.
When the great tree falls the chemical processes that were
going on in the wood, in the branches, in the leaves, etc.,
cease—they are finished. It is a law of Nature that com-
pounds once formed, as in the formation of wood, in the
formation of leaves, as in flesh or other organic matter, re-
main permanent in that form unless the chemical equilibrium
be disturbed by some outward force ; something must enter
in to disturb these chemical combinations or they will re-
main permanent to the end of time. If that is so the great
forest that grows up and falls would become piled up season
after season, until the whole earth would be covered in ; it
would not decay. Something must touch that dead forest.
First, something must enter in to decompose that growth
and return it to mother earth, from which it came ; to de-
compose and cause its return to the inorganic—to earth, air
and water.
Now, what does that? While it is the function of the
higher forms of plant life to build great structures, it is the
function of the lower forms of plant life to destroy them.
The life force, as exhibited in micro-organisms, these lowest
forms of plants that do not build largely, but which grow
immensely and change chemically great quantities of matter,
take hold of and destroy—decompose—all of these forms
that are built up by life as. exhibited in the animal, as exhib-
ited in the higher plants, and return, the material again to the
chemical forms from whence they came, which we may
roughly express- as being-earth, air and water. Then we have
two orders of plants, it would seem, that are very distinct
from each other—those that build and those that destroy.
And yet, when we come to trace this down from order to
order, we find the gradations so gradual, running into each
other so closely, that it is impossible to point out a distinct
dividing line. If we undertake a classification, a very short
classification even, we will then find them blending into each
other in such a way that dividing lines are hard to draw with
certainty. But such a classification will be of benefit, per-
haps, in making some landmarks that we may follow. Be-
ginning with the higher order of plants, we have what is
known as the
FLOWERING PLANTS—Phanerogams, which reproduce
by seeds, and

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