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 preA"xisting vital units or
primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the
necessary conditions for their development and growth.