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BOTANICAL NOTICE FOR JANUARY, 

 ON THE TORPIDITY OF PLANTS. 



As this is a season of the year when the botanist will wander in 

 vain in search of flowers, all vegetation laying, as it were, in a passive 

 condition, the flowers of summer having faded, the leaves having 

 fallen, and the fruits and seeds remaining in their winter's envelope, 

 waiting for the genial influence of the vernal sun and showers to rouse 

 their now toi-pid energies into the activity of the vegetating process, 

 we cannot better employ our contemplative faculties than in the con- 

 sideration of the nature of the condition of the vegetable world at this 

 season of the year, and the causes which induce that condition. 

 There has been too little attention paid in books of science to the 

 different circumstances of plants during the several seasons of the 

 year, and not a few errors have been the consequence. It is, there- 

 fore, my intention to notice the various conditions of vegetable nature 

 at the various seasons in their turn. 



In these northern latitudes this season may be said to be that of 

 the torpidity, or dormancy of plants. H ere it will be proper to remark, 

 that this condition is quite diflferent from that which is called death. 

 After the spring has departed, and summer heat assails our regions, 

 the various bulbous plants, such as crocus, snow-drop, hyacinth, and 

 tulip, are found to fade in beauty of flower, produce their seed, and 

 the stem withers down to the ground, but the plant is not dead ; 

 the bulb has within it a rich store of nutriment, which by its vital 

 processes it has collected from the earth, and treasured up within 

 itself an energy which resists the process of decay, but which is not 

 called into action until the commencement of the following annual 

 period of its vegetative life. In like manner, when the genial influ- 

 ence of the vernal showers and summer's sun has produced the expan- 

 sion of the bud and development of the leaf, the blooming of the 

 flower, and formation of the fruit in our orchard and fruit trees ; these 

 in their turn fade and fall away. The sap which ascended in spring, 

 has been elaborated in the expanded leaf, by those beautiful chemical 

 and vital processes, which, it will be our duty, in their turn, to examine 



