fj 1 - Letter from Dr, llioiiiton 



struct mankind ; and posterity will determine how far my 

 labours will have attached to them " national infamy," or 

 some small degree of praise. 



Quitting the " dancing cows," a story designed to hum- 

 ble my vanitv, I shall descend now to your reviewer's re- 

 marks on my pig story, which may lessen his boastings 

 as to pretensions to knowledge in natural history. I leave 

 my Botany to the last, as the public will, for the present 

 allow me some credit for that. 



After having traced the analogy of the seed in the seed- 

 vessel, fixed to it by a cord resembling the umbilical cord, 

 attaching the foetus to the uterus, I compared the lobes, or 

 seminal leaves, in their office, after the most celebrated bo- 

 tanists, to the mammse, or dugs of animals. Here your 

 reviewer observes : " But no absurdity, or opposition to fact, 

 can stop the doctor in his ardent pursuit of analogies*. As 

 the number of cotyledons, we beg his pardon, [a sneer] 

 of mammae or breasts, is different in different seeds, i it is 

 thus,* he observes, c with the parent animal which pos- 

 sesses one or more dugs.' This all the world knew. But we> 

 at least, did not know that c the number of -dugs is always 

 proportioned f by nature to the offspring to be produced; 

 and that it may be remarked, as, in a Titter of pigs, each 

 pig always goes to its own dug and never usurps that of 

 another, so children, when first born, show the same par- 

 tiality towards one breast/ If this were strictly and uni- 

 versally true, the cow must have at one birth at least double 

 Ihe young of the human mother $ whereas both .of them 



■Of honest love, when nymph and gentle swain 

 Waft sighs alternate te each other's heart. 

 So charm with ravishment the raptur'-d sense, 

 As does the voice of well-dcserv'd repcrt 

 Str&e with sweet melody the conscious soul ! 



Dr. Roberts. 

 ♦ The reviewer should have added, "that Dr. Thornton makes these 

 lobes or seminal leaves of the greatest importance to the young plant; for, 

 when removed, this indeed grows, but is dwariish, weak, and sterii. 

 Jn his note to these experiments, he remarks, this ve^etuble fact may- 

 teach us a truth respecting the rearing of cur own children: the babe 

 requiring that food which naure has kindly provided for him. It is ia 

 vain, he continues, that this analogy be shown to x\\t .in considerate. 

 Vox you no Dryads dress the roseare bower, 

 For ym no Nymphs their sparkling vase.-; pour., 

 Unmarked by yau, light Graces swim the greea. 

 It cannot, however, fail to strike those 



Whose mind the wel'-attemper'd ray 



Of Mite and 'virtue lights Avith purer day; 

 Whom. finer sense each soft vi ; r, t on owns, 

 With sweet respon-.ive sympathy of tones." Darwin. 



■)• I never sand, exueily profwtio/ied. 



have 



