No, that was all in one piece. True, Willie; and you may recollect something about a date stone. I do, indeed; that was single also. I see I must not be so sure another time about what I know. Now I understand. Our new friends of the hard shell stems, which bear fruit at all, have seeds of one piece instead of two. Quite so. Now a plant of one cotyledon in its seed, is said to be _Monocotyledonous_, while that having two lobes is _Dicotyledonous_; _mono_ meaning one, and _di_, two. Then my Gum tree, and Rose tree, and Sweet Pea, are all Dicotyledonous; but the nice Date Palm, the pretty Orchis, and the sweet Cocoa-nut, are Monocotyledonous. But are there any plants which are neither one nor the other? There are some whose seeds are not to be distinguished, and are known as _Acotyledonous_, or _without cotyledons_. Can you not name one? I don’t know, unless you mean such as the Ferns, the Mosses, and the Lichens on the rocks or decaying timber. They are the very ones. We have now had examples of the three great varieties of vegetation; _Monocotyledonous_, having one lobe to the seed; _Dicotyledonous_, having two lobes; and _Acotyledonous_, without any. Will you now, dear father, explain the way in which the Monocotyledonous plants differ from the Dicotyledonous, especially in their system of growth? I will, my boy, and we will begin this time with the seed. Any one can tell where the plumula and rostellum of the Cocoa-nut proceed, for we can see the two places in the shell, one at the top and the other at the bottom. But do tell me what the white of the Cocoa-nut is? That sweet substance is the _Albumen_, to nourish the young embryo inside. In most Monocotyledonous seeds, there is a lot of this albumen--which is thus chemically changed to suit for food. In the Date Palm this store-house is very hard, as you well know. Is the Embryo different from others? In general it is like an undivided cylinder, but in Grass and Corn, it is a flat plate. What! is Corn like the Palm, father? Yes; for although it has a second, unshapen lobe, it is truly monocotyledonous. Well, father, how does the growth of the Mono folks go on? In the Palm embryo are noticed bundles of fine tissue, arranged circularly from the plumula to the radicle. These tissues increase and shoot downwards. The cellular tissues of the embryo now enlarge to make room for woody fibres, which begin to appear. A rootlet is formed, and a leaf comes forth. But how is the stem formed? There are several crown leaves springing from the root in a circular form, each circle with its own cluster of vessels. Each leaf bud sends out a lot of woody bundles, curving downwards and outwards, which become entangled irregularly in the cellular tissue. That is how it is that there seems no order and arrangement about the wood of a Palm or Fern tree. All is higgledy-piggledy, and the moist stuff must be collected near the circumference. But what is the soft centre made up of?