Perceptivity of Planis, &c, 269 
by plenty of nourifhment, and a more vigorous vegetation has been 
the confequence. On another occafion, a plant being placed in a 
dark room, where light was admitted only through an aperture, 
put forth its {hoots towards the aperture, which elongating pafled 
through it; and this likewife was rewarded for its trouble by pou 
of licht and free air. 
That appearances fo fimilar to thofe that are obferved in ani- 
mals fhould be confidered as proceeding from the fame caufe, viz. 
volition, is not to be wondered at, when fo many of the inferior 
orders of animals hardly poflefs fo much of the loco-motive faculty— . 
particularly by men of warm imaginations, who, prepoffeffed in fa- 
vour of an opinion, were grafping at every diftant analogy to fup- 
port it. Though, as I have faid, we are by no means acquainted 
with the courfe of their proper fluids (fucci proprii), or with the 
power b y which they à are movad, „nor even can fay by what 
h T s, which are its food, are taken in; yet fo 
far we know, that here, as in the animal œconomy, there is a con-- 
ftant change and evolution of their fluids, and that a conftant fi 
ply is neceffary, without which they foon perifh. This fish, o 
neceflary, muft be taken in by abforption; and it is this act of ab- 
forption that I fhall endeavour to prove to be the efficient caufe of 
thefe motions in vegetables, and thus exclude volition from having — 
anycaufation in thefe phænomena; foritis fromtheir not having been - 
explained upon mechanical principles that mind has been reforted 
to. Mind isin general our laft refource when we fail in explaining 
natural phenomena. I could wifh that phyfiologifts were agreed 
upon the kind of abforption which takes place here, whether it be 
by active open-mouthed veflels, which in the common opinion 
takes place in the animal ceconomy, or by capillary attraction, 
which i is the moft general opinion in the vegetable; but the theory 
4 I {alt 
