Sect. XIII. i. i. OF VEGETABLE, £<c. 73 



SECT. XIII. 



OF VEGETABLE ANIMATION. 



I. I. Vegetables are irritable, mimofa, dion&a mufcipula. Vegeta- 

 ble fecretions. 2. Vegetable buds are inferior animals, are liable 

 to greater or lefs irritability, II. Stamens and pijlils of plants 

 fheiv marks of fenfbility. III. Vegetables poffefs fome degree of 

 volition. IV. Motions of plants are affociated like tlrfe of ani-r 

 mals. V. I. Vegetable Jlruffure like that of animals y their an- 

 thers andfligmas are living creatures. Male flowers of Vallif- 

 neria, 2. Whether vegetables poffefs ideas ? They have organs 

 offenff) as of touch andfrnell, and ideas of external things ? 



1. 1. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well as thofe of 

 the animal, are excitable into a variety of motions by irritations 

 of external objects. This appears particularly in the mimofa 

 or fenfitive plant, whofe leaves contract on the flighted injury; 

 the dionsea mufcipula, which was lately brought over from the 

 marfhes of America, prefents us with another curious inftance 

 of vegetable irritability ; its leaves are armed with fpines on 

 their upper edge, and are fpread 0:1 the ground around the 

 Hem ; when an infect creeps on any of them in its palTage to 

 the flower or feed, the leaf ihuts up like a fteel rat-trap, and de- 

 ftroys its enemy. See Botanic Garden, Part II. note on Silene. 



The various fecretions of vegetables, as of odour, fruit, gum, 

 refin, wax, honey, feem brought about in the fame manner as in 

 the glands of animals : the taftelefs moifture of the earth is con- 

 verted by the hop-plant into a bitter juice ; as by the caterpil- 

 lar in the nutfhell the fweet kernel is converted into a bitter 

 powder. While the power of abforption in the roots and barks 

 of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their 

 mouths like the la£teals and lymphatics of animals. 



2. The individuals of the vegetable world may be confidered. 

 as inferior or lefs perfect animals \ a tree is a congeries of many 

 living buds, and in this refpecT: refembles .the branches of coral- 

 line, which are a congeries of a multitude of animals. Each of 

 thefe buds of a tree has its proper leaves or petals for lungs, 

 produces its viviparous or its oviparous offspring in buds or 

 feeds ; has its own roots, which extending down the Rem of 

 the tree are interwoven with the roots of the other buds, and 

 form the bark, which is the only living part of the ftem, is an- 

 nually renewed, and is fuperinduced upon the former bark, 

 Which then dies, and with its ftagnated juices gradually harden- 



Vol.. I. L ing 



