268 The Rev. Patrick KEITA on 
same time taken carefully up and gradually exposed to the cold, 
and the remaining part of the top and root subjected to the same 
process in the following year, the branches of the top will become 
roots, and the ramifications of the root will become branches, 
protruding leaves, flowers, and fruit in due season *.. 
How then is the anomaly of the successful inversion of the 
vegetating plant to be accounted for, since no art has yet been 
able to effect it in the seminal germ? This is a difficulty for 
which I do not recollect to have seen any solution offered ; and 
in the want of all other plausible conjecture I submit the follow- 
ing: The embryo of the seed is an individual and solitary germ, . 
whose developement is necessarily effected in a determinate 
manner, owing to the peculiar structure and organization of its 
parts, and peculiar action of the instinctive principle ; that is, by | 
the descent of the radicle into the earth, and ascent of the plume- 
let into the air, or into the soil and medium respectively suited to 
each. It could not, therefore, succeed by being inverted, be- 
cause the radicle and plumelet contain as yet no principle whose 
developement could be effected in any other way; so that you 
might just as well expect a child to walk upon its hands, asa . 
seed to germinate by the descent of the plumelet. 
But the case is not the same with the vegetating and inverted 
plant. Its roots and branches contain now multitudes of buds 
or germs which have been acquired in the process of vegetation, 
and which, according to the doctrine of Du Hamel, I shall sup- 
pose to be plants in miniature, containing the rudiments of every 
thing necessary to the perfection of the species. Consequently 
they contain a part equivalent to the radicle of the embryo, and | 
capable of being converted into a root, when placed in a proper 
* Physique des Arbres, 
soil, 
