one.

3. Musci, mosses; whose antheræ have no filaments, and are placed at a distance from the female flower, and whose seeds want their proper tunic, cotyledon, or placenta. 4. Filices, ferns; whose fructification is on the back of the leaves. 5. Gramina, grasses; as also the various sorts of corn, that have simple leaves, a jointed stem, a glumose calyx, and a single seed. 6. Palma, palms; which have simple stems that are frondose at the summit, or a species of trunk, composed of a branch and a leaf blended together. 7. Plants, which include all that do not enter into any of the other divisions; and these are herbaceous, when they die down to the root every year, for in the perennial kinds, the buds are all produced on the root below the surface of the ground. Shrubs, when their stems come up without buds. Trees, when their stems come up with buds.*

Vegetation seems to be one of the first, and immediate properties of nature; though vegetation itself is evidently referable to a higher design. Upon this account, few parts of the surface of the earth are vacant and unemployed. Plants are as various as the soil, the air, and the situation of the different places in which they grow.

Philosophia Botanica.

grow. Obeying and accomplishing one great benevolent design, they are all either pleasing, or useful, or both. Some contribute to the ornament of the earth; some afford food and medicine to the inhabitants; and others supply pastures to the animals destined for their use. There is hardly a plant, that, though rejected as food by some animals, is not ardently desired by others. The horse yields the common water hemlock to the goat; and the cow, the long-leafed water hemlock to the sheep. The goat, again, leaves the aconite, or bane berries to the horse, &c. Plants, which afford proper nourishment to some animals, are by others avoided, because they would not only be hurtful, but even poisonous. Hence, no plant is absolutely deleterious to animal life. Poison is only a relative term. The euphorbia, or spurge, so noxious to man, is greedily devoured by some of the insect tribes.† Even the pollen is given over to us, with very little alteration in the form of wax. The nectar of flowers itself, the honey, is contained chiefly in the base of the pistil, or female organ. It undergoes no alteration in the body of the bee, since we can form honey by concentrating the nectar: it, however, always retains the odour, and not unfreBb 2 quently

* Smellie.

quently the noxious qualities of the plant which affords it. It fairly may be considered as the vehicle and recipient of the fecundating dust, which facilitates the bursting of the globules, and serves to the germination of the individual. It exudes from all the female parts, but particularly from the ovaria, and is the humour afforded to receive the fecundating powder. Pores may even be observed in hyacinths, through which it flows.t

* Chaptal.

LET.

LETTER LX.

So various, and so unbounded are the phænomena with which nature teems, and in such mysterious manner does she present her products to us, that the wise man, at every step he advances, still becomes more diffident of general assertions, and more cautious in assenting to what may, or may not possibly be true. Contemplate even the most common operations of the animal and the vegetable world. Are they not all amazing? Is there any thing but daily experience and constant observation, which can enable us without astonishment and wonder, to see an animal bring forth another of the same kind, and a tree to blossom, shove out its leaves, and ultimately bear fruit? In our preceding enquiries, we have occasionally been. induced to consider the accession of bulk to bodies in general. But vegetables were not then under our investigation. It was long imagihed, that all the great operations in nature

are to be reduced to two principles, those of crystallization, and organization; but, that often they are so concealed as to be invisible. Hence crystallized substances have been often mistaken for organized ones, and vice versa. They differ, however, essentially in their growth and origin. Organized beings spring from a germ, in which all the parts are concentrated, and they grow by general expansion; whereas, crystallized substances increase by the successive apposition of certain molecules of a determined figure, which unite in one common mass. Thus crystallized bodies do not grow, properly speaking, though their substance is augmented; they are not pre-formed, but, are formed daily.

*

A vegetable is possessed of solidity and extension, those general standards, by which matter is distinguished from spirit. It acknowledges gravity and attraction, as do material bodies. But it, at the same time, possesses many properties, and is to be distinguished by many affections, of which matter never can, nor ever has been observed in the least degree to partake. It is therefore a distinct being, and is so distinct by possessing life. Matter may be

moved,

* Adams.