and Structure of Plants. 281 



especial place, and may be truly said to bear about their soil 

 within them. 



Thus the earth has frequently been referred to as the 

 common stomach of plants, and the decompositions which 

 therein take place have been loosely likened to digestion ; the 

 roots of the vegetable body being considered analogous to the 

 lacteal ducts of animals, for these absorb and convey as chyle, 

 the eliminated extract of the one, as those imbibe and trans- 

 rait, as sap, the juices furnished by the other. But the earth 

 is not the external stomach of plants any more, nay, not so 

 much as the nest is the external uterus of birds : the analogy 

 is greatly forced ; and the parallel would have been much 

 closer, had the earth been described as the kitchen, rather than 

 as the stomach of vegetables ; fermentation, putrefaction, and 

 the other changes which therein go on, being much more 

 similar to the processes of cookery, than to the several stages 

 of digestion. In truth, the lymph absorbed by the roots is still 

 crude aliment, nor does it become changed into proper sap 

 until after it has been elaborated in the leaves or other assimi- 

 lating organs of the vegetable frame ; the digestive, circulating, 

 and respiratory functions being all of them more or less com- 

 bined in plants, and never so separate in their organic systems 

 as in brutes and men. 



My present object, however, is not to shew the insufficiency 

 either of locomotion or a recipient stomach, as diagnoses be- 

 tween animals and plants ; for Conferva, Volvox, the Corallines , 

 &c. have long certified that point ; but rather to trace the slight 

 adumbrations of a stomach that we find in plants ; an organ so 

 all-important, all-engrossing to animals at large, that to cater 

 for its due supplies their other members are so chiefly, so con- 

 stantly employed, that one might almost be disposed to think, 

 that they do not " eat to live, but live to eat :" and which an- 

 ticipations, though faint, are curious ; as far as I know, they 

 have not hitherto been dwelt on, or at any rate would seem too 

 slightly to have been passed over. 



Nature, ever fond of working on the same model, seldom 

 arrives at any new form suddenly or per saltern ; but in her 

 progress towards perfecting a type, by scarcely perceptible 

 degrees modifies the most diverse organs, prefiguring, for many 



