THE VEGETABLE ORGANIZATION. 289 



vesicles, as they may be termed, may possibly also be com- 

 pounded in like manner, and so on to an extent which it is 

 utterly beyond our powers to comprehend. To the limits of 

 minute division in the works of the great Creator there appears 

 no bound. Were it not that all parts of his creation clearly 

 prove that magnitude and number present no restraint to his 

 operations — that the vast and the minute are equally the object 

 of his attention — we should often be tempted to throw aside 

 many of the sublime truths of natural science as little better 

 than the wild reveries of a heated imagination. But every 

 department of scientific research leads to the same conclusions, 

 overwhelming as they are to the powers of the human intellect, 

 and every mode of investigation teaches the same results ; and 

 while we make the vain attempt to conceive the wonders of 

 creation, we can only pause and admire when the faint glimmer- 

 ing perception, which alone we are able to obtain, arises in our 

 minds. 



But to proceed, without entering further into a question which 

 is quite beyond our powers — this green powdery crust in its ele- 

 mentary composition — elementary, as it appears to our eyes, 

 may represent what is to us the ultimate forms of vegetable 

 organization. A simple vesicle connected in this instance with 

 similar vesicles by a quaternary arrangement, in others, as in 

 some of the Confervce and various plants of the Algce tribes, by a 

 binary, ternary, or linear mode of arrangement. 



When the connection between the organic particles is more 

 close, the vesicles being as it were brought within the sphere of 

 mutual attraction, we have them not merely in contact, but 

 variously compounded — two together as in the granules of 

 Gracilaria erecta — three together as in the ternate granules of 

 Rhodomela 'pinastroides — or lastly, four or more as in the compound 

 granules of Microcladia glandulosa. 



If a number of these elementary vesicles be so arranged in sim- 

 ple contact as to take up the smallest possible space, a section of 

 them will present the appearance of a series of circles, or if 

 subjected to a certain degree of equable pressure, they will 

 form a kind of network, pentagonal, hexagonal, or otherwise, 

 according to the presence of various modifying circumstances. 



In thus regarding the arrangement of the ultimate vesicles of 

 the vegetable organization to form the cellular structure of plants, 

 we must not confine our attention to the mere mechanical 

 principles of juxta-position and pressure. Each organic vesicle, 

 in a state of activity, is endowed, either in itself, or as appertain- 

 ing to the vegetable structure of which it forms a part, with the 

 principle of life. It may, therefore, increase in substance and 

 expand in size; and from this gradual expansion or growth, 

 certain changes in its development and in its apparent structure 

 will necessarily take place. Thus, by the gradual expansion of 

 a simple vesicle, it will attain to a larger size — its shape may 



