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The grain of wheat is a part of the flower of the wheat plant, which, when it becomes ripe, is easily separated. It contains a minute and rudimentary plant; and, when it is sown, this gradually grows, or becomes developed into, the perfect plant, with its stem, roots, leaves, and flowers, which again give rise to similar seeds. No mineral body runs through a regular series of changes of form and size, and then gives off parts of its substance which take the same course. Mineral bodies present no such development, and give off no seeds or germs. They do not reproduce their kind.

Hannibal now recrossed the Apennines, descended into the rich plains of Campania, and laid waste, without opposition, that fertile territory. But he was unable either to make himself master of any of the towns, or to draw the wary Fabius to a battle. The Roman general contented himself with occupying the mountain passes leading from Samnium into Campania, by which Hannibal must of necessity retreat, and believed that he had caught him, as it were, in a trap; but Hannibal eluded his vigilance by an ingenious stratagem, passed the defiles of the Apennines without loss, and established himself in the plains of Apulia, where he collected supplies from all sides, in order to prepare for the winter. Meantime the Romans, having become impatient at the inactivity of Fabius, raised Minucius, the Master of the Horse, to an equality in command with Fabius. His rashness very nearly gave Hannibal the opportunity, for which he was ever on the watch, to crush the Roman army by a decisive blow; but Fabius was able to save his colleague from destruction; and Hannibal, after obtaining only a partial advantage, took up his winter quarters at the small town of Geronium. Minucius acknowledged his error, and resumed his post of Master of the Horse.

The plot, as Oates invented and detailed it, was on the most magnificent scale imaginable. The pope himself was at the head of it. The pope, he said, had laid the subject before a society of learned theologians at Rome, and they had decided that in such a case as that of England, where the sovereign and a majority of the people had renounced the true religion, and given themselves up to avowed and open heresy, the monarch lost all title to his crown, and the realms thus fallen from the faith lapsed to the pope, and were to be reclaimed by him by any mode which it seemed to him expedient to adopt. Under these circumstances, the pope had assumed the sovereignty over England, and had commissioned the society of the Jesuits--a very powerful religious society, extending over most of the countries of Europe--to take possession of the realm; that, in the prosecution of this plan, the king was to be assassinated, and that a very large sum of money had been raised and set apart, to be paid to any person who would kill the king; that an offer of ten thousand pounds had been made to the queen's physician if he would poison him. The physician had insisted upon fifteen thousand for so great a service, and this demand had finally been acceded to; and five thousand had actually been paid him in advance. Besides the murder of the king, a general assassination of the Protestants was to take place. There were twenty thousand Catholics in London, for instance, who, according to Oates's account of the plan, were to rise on a preconcerted night, and each one was to kill five Protestants, which it was thought they could easily do, as the Protestants would be taken wholly by surprise, and would be unarmed. The revolution being thus effected, the crown was to be offered to Charles's brother, the Duke of York, as a gift from the pope, and, if he should refuse to accept it on such conditions as the pope might see fit to impose, he was himself to be immediately assassinated, and some other disposal to be made of the kingdom.

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