4 Dr Harvey's Observations on the 



riosity in regard to the natural longevity and size of this class 

 of objects. Moreover, they seem to me peculiarly interesting, 

 as evincing the essential unity of the plans in this department 

 of His works of the Author of Nature, and as affording un- 

 equivocal indications of design. For, if we can perceive the 

 same general principle to pervade alike the economy of tree- 

 plants^ which appear to live for ages and to grow to an enor- 

 mous size, and that of confessedly annual and obviously very 

 small plants, which completely disappear at the close of every 

 season, it cannot but enhance our conviction, that the whole 

 vegetable kingdom, the extremes of it thus meeting, proceeds 

 from one and the same Creator. And such a principle we 

 may perceive ; for both the one and the other are strictly an- 

 nual and moderately sized plants, and are constructed ex- 

 actly on the same general plan. Certain peculiarities there 

 are, indeed, in the economy of tree-plants, viz., the property 

 of growing as parasites on their fellows, and the persistency 

 of their dead stems and roots, — peculiarities leading, in the 

 course of years, when the species is greatly multiplied, to the 

 formation of the masses known as trees. These peculiarities, 

 however, in a physiological point of view, or in reference to 

 merely physical causes, are entirely unessential. They are 

 important only in relation to final causes, or as furnishing 

 conclusions in Natural Theology. And with reference to these 

 they are most important. For they clearly bespeak a design 

 or purpose in the mind of the Creator : provisions they are 

 of His, whereby, out of short and slender annuals, He forms 

 timber for the use of man, — a substance which, if not indis- 

 pensable to the existence, ministers at least in a thousand 

 different ways to the comfort and wellbeing, of our race ; but 

 the production of which would be impossible, did not the 

 economy of the plants in question thus differ from that of all 

 other annuals. 



The principles now advanced in regard to the nature of 

 trees have no pretensions to originality. Though not sug- 

 gested by any knowledge or recollection of the circumstance, 

 ^hey are, in fact, the principles long ago put forth by M. Du 

 Petit Thouars, respecting the nature of buds. The applica- 



