Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the
two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we
should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and
inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the
screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to
greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.

But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of
science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or
the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants
or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these
words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal
manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.




Chapter III.

Alternations of Forest Growths.



No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the
alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the
apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as
wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has
been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of
their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less
ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them