HO . POT ANY. 



of the sap in the interior of a plant, whose bark is filled with a milky 

 proper juice of a poisonous nature. He describes the natives of 

 Teneriffe as being in the habit of removing the bark from the euphorbia 

 canariensis, and then sucking the inner portion of the stem in order 

 to quench their thirst ; this part containing a quantity of limpid and 

 not elaborated sap*." Yet, notwithstanding all these difficulties, 

 botany is capable of furnishing us with an analysis which will lead to 

 important conclusions with respect to the properties of different 

 vegetables. 



The organization and philosophy of plants, furnish us with subjects of 

 interest little inferior to those afforded by their economical properties 

 and uses, constituting an assemblage of beings different from animals, 

 but agreeing with them in many particulars, they present in a strong 

 light the wonderful laws of vitality wherever it is found to exist. So 

 closely indeed do the phenomena of life, and even the material forms 

 in which they are observed, resemble each other in these two great 

 departments of nature, that the discrimination of the animal and 

 vegetable structure is sometimes attended with difficulty. This, how- 

 ever, only occurs in what the insolence of philosophy chooses to call 

 the lowest grades in both scales of existence ; for although we easily 

 distinguish the ox from the oak, yet if we descend the vital channels 

 in which the divisions of nature run, we meet with living forms 

 whose apparent identity has as yet been seperated only by the prism 

 of the imagination. 



I conclude then, that the advantages of applying botany to useful 

 pui'poses are inamense. In medicine it enables the practioner to sub- 

 stitute for one plant, which may not be obtainable, or attended with in- 

 convenience in its administration, another, having similar properties, 

 and which may be naturally allied to it. In horticulture it is not less 

 important; the propagation or cultivation of one plant is usually appli- 

 cable to all its kindred ; the habits of one species in an order will 

 often be those of the rest ; and finally the phenomena of grafting^ 

 that curious operation, which is one of the grand features of distinction 

 between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the success of which 

 is always controlled by ties of blood, can only be understood by the 

 attentive botanist. 



The adaptation of plants to the soil, the climate, and the necessities 

 pf animals inhabiting the same region with themselves, is one of those 

 • Hurtlaw's Botany. 



