14f The Rev. J. B. Reade on the Existence of 



tions of nutrition and reproduction, are shared in common by 

 all organized bodies; and it is through the medium of similar 

 organs that the vital principle carries on these functions, both 

 in the animal and in the vegetable kingdoms. Accordingly 

 we find a muscular system in the former, a corresponding cel- 

 lular system in the latter, and a vascular system in both. In 

 carrying out these analogies further, it is not uncommon to 

 find the stem and branches represented as a frame- work or 

 skeleton for the support of the parts necessary to life. But we 

 have already included the chief mass of these portions of ve- 

 getable structure in the vascular and cellular systems; and 

 surely it would be unphilosophical to make the same parts 

 subservient to the illustration of different analogies. While, 

 however, we reject the stem and branches as the skeleton, we 

 are not driven from the analogy ; for plants as well as animals 

 have an osseous system ; and it is my design in the present pa- 

 per to point out its construction and locality. 



Having been requested by Mr. R. Rigg, — an able analytical 

 chemist, whose valuable researches into the composition of 

 vegetable products will ere long be made public, — to examine 

 the ashes of plants with the microscope, I procured a platinum 

 spoon and a large spirit-larnp as my working apparatus. 

 Portions of plants were then submitted to an intense heat 

 until the carbonaceous parts were entirely dissipated, and only 

 a few apparently white ashes remained. The specimens thus 

 incinerated consisted chiefly of grasses, together with barley, 

 wheat, &c, and in all of them I have been able to discover, 

 by means of the microscope, a most beautiful, and in many 

 a most elaborate, structure. That this detection of structure 

 in the ashes of plants is altogether new, I must infer from the 

 silence of our best writers on the subject of physiological 

 botany. The fact, had it been known, would have appeared 

 far too interesting and important to be dismissed without spe- 

 cial notice. The commonly conceived opinion is, to use the 

 words of Professor Henslow, that carbon fixed under the form 

 of a nutritive material is elaborated for the development of all 

 parts of vegetable structure, and that those earthy, saline, and 

 metallic ingredients which are found in the ashes of plants being 

 accidentally introduced, cannot with any certainty be looked 

 upon as products of vegetation, or as ever constituting essen- 

 tial elements of organization*. 



Now, since the presence or absence of organization is direct 

 evidence of the presence or absence of life, the first thing 

 which strikes the mind under this newly discovered feature in 



* Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Principles of Botany, pp. 176, 177, 224, &c. 



