Experiments on Indigo. 279 



This sample of indigo, therefore, was of the following composition: 



Oxide of iron 5.75 



Alumine 0.75 



Lime 0.90 



Green vegetable matter . . .8.80 

 Red or brown ditto . . . . 2.00 



Pure indigo 79.50 



Loss 2.30 



100.00 



Mr. Burnett on the Functions and Structure of Plants: with 

 reference to the Adumbrations of a Stomach in Vegetals. 



To the Editor of the Quarterly* Journal of Science. r 



Dear Sir, 



u Was not the first animal that ever lived, a plant that 

 found out the blessing of a stomach, and ran away with it?" 

 Such was a proposition suggested to me after the Physiolo- 

 gical Lectures I gave at the Royal Institution last spring, 

 in which the form and functions of the various organs of the 

 vegetable frame, and the distinctive characters of the several 

 grades of the organic realm, had formed the subject matter 

 of discussion. 



This was a hasty conclusion, and one certainly not warranted 

 by the premises adduced ; for although the stomach is con- 

 fessedly a most important organ in the animal economy, an 

 organ to which we scarcely find anything analogous in plants, 

 and locomotion one of their most valuable endowments, still 

 neither are constantly present ; and even were they, sensation, 

 true instinct, and volition would yet remain, the best diagnos- 

 tics of the animal creation. But there is something peculiarly 

 terse and epigrammatic in the idea which would thus boldly, 

 and in so few words, enunciate two of the most celebrated defi- 

 nitions of a plant, and include their necessary interdependence ; 

 for physiologists have long dwelt on the circumstance^ that 

 " vegetables are nourished by their external, while animals are 

 nourished by their internal surface;" and naturalists have fre- 

 quently referred to the power of M moving from one place to 



