46 SYLVA AMERICANA. 



dom. No one ought to wonder that new leaves are produced 

 every year from the root or branches ; for in the same manner 

 do we daily see the feathers of birds produced. A feather, 

 which is a most curious piece of workmanship, consists of a con- 

 cave base, filled with a vessel like a lymphatic, so that the nutri- 

 ment can pass upward but not downward ; next there is the 

 midrib and the lateral branches, both partial and proper, so that a 

 feather may be compared to a fern twice compounded. Now daily 

 experience informs us that feathers, though adorned with such 

 curious mechanism falls off every year, and that others, springing 

 from the body of the bird, succeed in their stead. Moreover, it is 

 evident that feathers grow only out of the body of the bird, that 

 this body is their root, and that this root owes its origin at first to 

 a seed or egg. The same also holds in plants ; therefore polypi, 

 and plants of every kind, have undoubtedly seeds or eggs, by 

 which they are multiplied, without being cut or propagated by 

 shoots, layers, branches, or suckers. Add to this, the celebrated 

 Jussieu discovered eggs or seeds in the polypi as may be seen in 

 the Transactions of the Stockholm Society for 1746. 



Here we are to observe that all viviparous animals have their 

 eggs, out of which comes their offspring, though these eggs are 

 contained in their proper matrix, and excluded in due time, in 

 the same manner as an egg in the nest cherished by the incuba- 

 tion of the bird, whose uterus is the nest. Nor can we deny, 

 but the smallest vegetables have seeds, although not often dis- 

 coverable by the naked eye. Valisnerius has discovered the 

 seeds in duck's meat ; and Michelius has done the same in the 

 mucor and byssus ; Bobart in the ferns ; Linnaeus in the mosses ; 

 and Reaumur in the fungi. The ancients thought that the mis- 

 tletoe was produced without seed, having seen it often grow from 

 the underside of branches ; for how the seeds of mistletoe could 

 be conveyed from one tree to another, and there adhere to the 

 underside of the branches, was very difficult for them to con- 

 ceive. But time has discovered, that the thrush, swallowing the 

 berries on account of the pulp, afterwards voids the seeds entire, 

 which adhere with the excrements to the branches. These vis- 

 cous seeds are washed by the rains, so that some of them are 



