The grasses seem to have been the means of revealing the earliest dawn of plant life, for the Hon. Sidney Osborne discovered that the colourless protoplasm, or organizable liquid extracted from the roots of young wheat, produced spontaneously and simultaneously double ovate vesicles, or cells, such as are found in the roots themselves; and in that liquid, though hermetically sealed in glass tubes, the formation of these vesicles or cells was as active after six months as in the liquid freshly taken from the young plant. Mr. Osborne believed these vesicles to be the earliest organisms of plant life, and that this is the direct and prevailing mode of production of the embryo. This accords with the observations of Messrs. Wenham and Devey. Many other very remarkable plants belonging to the Monocotyledons might be mentioned, as the Dracæna Draco, or Dragon tree of Teneriffe, one of the most ancient trees existing; the Pandanus, or screw pine, with its aërial roots, indigenous in the islands of Oceania; and the Zostera, or sea wrack, the only flower-bearing plant except one that inhabits the ocean; their flowers are minute and bisexual, are rarely produced, but they cover large areas with long grassy leaves. Bulbous plants, and the Orchidaceæ, the most splendid ornaments of our gardens and hothouses, are members of this class. Of the former, the snowdrop, crocus, colchicum, arum, hyacinth, narcissus, tulip, and lily form a group of singular beauty. A bulb is merely a subterranean stem remaining permanently in the condition of a bud. It consists of a disc, or conical plate, which is the point of growth whence the flower-bearing stem and the leaves spring. These are surrounded by leafy scales of a fleshy character overlapping one another. The Liliaceæ and the Amaryllidaceæ contain many of the most remarkable and beautiful bulbous plants known in gardens. To the former order belong the hyacinth, tulip, and onion, in which the growing point is surrounded by a series of fleshy tunics, each of which encloses its predecessor; as also the lily itself, in the bulb of which the growing point is enclosed in fleshy scales imbricated in rows one above the other. One or two circles of roots descend from the circumference of the disc in the form of slender, soft, white cords or threads, with a spongy termination of cellular tissue to imbibe water and other liquids for the nourishment of the plant. These bulbs are reproduced by buds, or offsets, developed in the axils of the fleshy scales, which fall off either the first or second year of growth. Offsets are also produced by the arum, crocus, and meadow saffron or colchicum, whose bulbs form a solid mass, and are called corms. These offsets merely reproduce a _facsimile_ of the parent. In these and all flowering plants fructification must take place before a new form or variety can be expected.