Numerical Divisions in Nature. 887 



Germany, but which we believe we do not err in stating 

 to be wholly unknown here. Oken and his followers main- 

 tain that a plant is to be considered as organized water, 

 with two poles, one of which is directed to the heavens or 

 light, the other to the earth, with a strong preponderance to- 

 wards the latter ; one pole being telluric, the other celestial. 

 The elements of this organized water, they say, are two, cel- 

 lular and vascular, both acted upon, not only by the po- 

 larity of the individual they constitute, but also by the 

 influence of water and light. The root and stems they 

 understand to depend upon a telluric agency, to be the 

 same in essence but different in station, the root being a 

 stem under the influence of water and earth, and the stem 

 a root under the influence of light and air, and the leaves 

 and flowers to depend upon a celestial agency, to be also 

 essentially the same, but modified by circumstances, the leaf 

 being specifically influenced by air, the flower by light. 

 It is these opinions which have given rise to Oken's mode 

 of arrangement in fours, which does not appear to have 

 been considered even by himself reducible to practice, 

 but rather a speculative view of the mutual relations of 

 vegetable bodies. To show, however, by one example, 

 that whether we understand the intentions of the author 

 rightly or not, his method is, in fact, with regard to the 

 characters he builds it upon, wholly at variance with nature, 

 and totally inapplicable to practice, we will take his defi- 

 nition of stefn-plants., which answer to monocotyledones, and 

 see what it is worth. In stem-plants, he says, the leaves 

 and flowers are kept back, a flower can be seldom found 

 perfect in both its calyx and corolla, and the vascular ^stem 

 is but imperfectly communicated to the leaves. {Lehrb, 

 1507.) The leaves being kept back, that is to say, im- 

 perfectly formed, evolved or developed, is the first propo- 

 sition. What ! is the wide-spreading coma of the Palm 

 and Banana, or the dense herbage of the Grass tribe, or the 

 rigid foliage of Pandaneae and Bromeliaceae, all stem-plants, 

 and most numerous in their kinds, are these instances of 

 imperfectly developed leaves? To the leaves of some of 

 the palm tribe it is well-known that those of no other 

 plants can be compared for excessive developement. But, 

 says Mr. Bischoff, these are not leaves at all, they are 

 *' expansiones tantum foliaceae ipsius trunci substantiae ha- 

 benda " — mere foliaceous dilatations of the trunk, analogous 

 only to vhe true leaves of leaf-plants and flower-plants, but 

 by no means to be confounded with them, as has indeed been 



