“Now let us remove the skin, or skins rather, for there are two of them. Begin as far away from the black mark as you can. You see that the outer skin is tough like leather, while the inner one is soft and silky. Now, if you pull the skins off gently, you will find something like a stout little root pointing towards the little hole you have already noticed. If you look at the edge of the seed you will notice a thin line or crack. Putting the knife into this crack, we find that the seed consists chiefly of two large, flat, white parts or lobes, with a very small object in between them. Let us remove one of these white masses, and have a look at this small object with the glass.” [Illustration: Seed of Runner Bean. (1) outside; (2) inside; (3) baby plant, enlarged. _a_, shoot; _b_, root; _c_, seed coat or skin; _d_, junction of seed-leaves.] Each of the children had a look through the glass in turn. “Why,” said Tom, “it is very like what we found inside the horse-chestnut bud. I can see two tiny leaves.” “Remove the little object on the point of your needle and look at it again,” said Uncle George. “It has got something that your little horse-chestnut shoot did not have, I think.” “There is a little thing like a root,” said Tom. “It is a little plant with a very fat little root,” said Frank. “That is just what it is,” said his uncle. “Has every seed got a little plant inside it, Uncle George?” Dolly asked. “Every seed, Dolly, no matter how small.” Uncle George split up one of the hard seeds that had not been soaked, and showed them a little plant of the same kind inside; but it was so hard and brittle that he could crumble it up into powder between his fingers. “And what are the two large white lobes for?” asked Frank. “These are the seed-leaves. They are stores of plant-food. The young plant is fed by these until its root grows far down into the soil and its shoot grows high up into the air—until it is old enough and strong enough to find food for itself, in fact. “In the bud, the little shoot is fed by the sap of the mother-plant. Here, in the seed, we have a baby plant wrapped up in two coats, one thick and leathery and the other soft and warm; and, in place of a large feeding-bottle, there are two huge masses of plant-food wrapped up with it.” “Why do we put seeds in the ground to make them grow?” asked Frank. “A seed requires three things to make it grow. These three things are—_water_, _air_, and _warmth_. We can grow seeds without soil at all if we give them these three things. But if either water, air, or warmth be wanting, your seeds cannot grow.” “That is why seeds won’t grow outside in winter, then,” said Frank. “That is the reason,” his uncle answered. “In winter there is not enough heat to make seeds grow. If you sow seeds in a pot of dry soil in summer, and do not give them water, they will not grow.”