“Still another expedient is to strike at the very source of the sap, the roots. The foot of the tree is laid bare in the springtime, its main roots being denuded of their covering and left thus exposed all summer to the open air and the hot sun. No longer enjoying the coolness and darkness necessary to their office, they furnish less nourishment to the tree, and this scarcity causes the formation of flower-buds. A still more drastic method, but one that would kill the tree if employed imprudently, is to strip the roots of the refractory subject without mercy, cutting and mutilating a certain number of them and then putting back the earth that has been removed. A diminution in the flow of sap must necessarily result from this surgical operation. Finally, if the tree is small enough for the purpose, it is dug up at the end of autumn, with care to preserve the roots as far as possible, and planted again somewhere else. The disturbance caused by this change of place suffices to make the tree blossom the next year.” CHAPTER XXVII THE SEED “The ovary of the flower, after being fertilized by the pollen, becomes the fruit, the apple on the apple-tree, the cherry on the cherry-tree, the walnut on the walnut-tree, the grain of wheat in the wheat-ear, and so on for all plants. The fruit contains seeds in greater or less number, and sometimes only one, as in the peach, plum, and almond; often several, as in the apple and pear; while in other instances they can be counted by hundreds and thousands, as in the melon, the pumpkin, and the poppy-head. The natural function of the fruit is first to supply nourishment and then to protect its seeds by means of coverings, these being sometimes fleshy, sometimes thin and dry, sometimes hard and in the form of strong shells. In their turn the seeds have as their task the propagating of the species. Every form of plant-life, from the giants of the forest, the oak, beech, fir, and others, to the tiniest moss, has its beginning in the seed. Every plant has its flowers, its fruit, and its seeds. It is in the seed that vegetation is preserved in a thriving condition through the ages; it is by the seed that every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass propagate their kind and leave a numerous progeny. “Who would not like to know,” continued Uncle Paul, “something about the formation of the seed that is sown in the ground to become either a little plant or an enormous tree? What is inside it? How can an oak come from an acorn and a pear-tree from the pip of a pear? I will try, my friends, to satisfy the very natural curiosity such a mystery cannot fail to arouse in you.