i 



The Rev. P. Keith on the Internal Structure of Plants. 291 



you have the least complexity of structure, that is, a structure 

 simply vascular, the caudex being composed merely of a ho- 

 mogeneous mass of pulp covered with a fine epidermis. 



Yet the plants called imperfect, though occupying the lowest 

 grade in the scale of terrestrial life, are precisely what they 

 ought to be, and are altogether indispensable to the integrity 

 of the vegetable kingdom. They are, as it were, the founda- 

 tion on which the superstructure of a more luxuriant vegeta- 

 tion is raised, whether we regard them as having made part 

 of a former world, or as they now exist. They sow their seeds 

 spontaneously. They germinate where no other plants could 

 live. They grow up, and come to maturity, and perish where 

 they grow, and thus form in the process of years a soil fit for 

 the habitat of plants of a nobler order. Hence, though they 

 are devoid of fair forms, they are by no means devoid of uti- 

 lity. Without them we do not know that the more perfect 

 lants could exist : and what would the surface of this earth 

 e if stript of its vegetation ? — a mere expanse of desert, or of 

 bare and flinty rock ; or, as in the deluge of old, a vast and 

 trackless deep, rolling in unrestrained majesty, and rendering 

 the encompassed globe totally unfit for the habitation of men 

 or of animals; a blank, if we may presume to say so, in the 

 creation of God ! 



Quaque fuit tellus, illic et pontus et aer. 

 Sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda, 

 Lucis egens aer. — Ovid, Met., i. 15. 



But look at its beautifully diversified surface under the mo- 

 dification of hill and dale, mountain and valley, river, lake, 

 ocean ; the hills covered with verdure, the valleys abounding 

 in corn, and in the fairest forms of vegetable being; the 

 mountains skirted with the sturdy oak, the noble cedar, or 

 the lofty palm; the rivers carrying health and fertility along 

 with them in their winding course, and an ocean wafting the 

 tall and stately bark, richly laden with merchandize, to the 

 remotest shores of the habitable globe, and enabling the ad- 

 venturous mariner to carry back in return the wealth or the 

 superfluities of distant regions. 



Vela danius, vastumque, cava trabe, currimus aequor. 



Mneidy iii. 191. 



Look at these providential arrangements resulting from the 

 bounty of a kind Creator, and you have a world replenished 

 with everything that is needful to the support of animal life, 

 and paradise fitted for the reception of man ! 



Ashford, Jan. 17, 1834. P. Keith. 



2 P2 



