of a Stomach in Plants. 291 



purpose, of nearly equal size and health; both were kept 

 under similar circumstances, save that the one was restrained 

 from flies, worms, and all kinds of animal food, while the other 

 was daily fed with small strips of rump steaks ; the result of 

 which experiment was, that the Epicurean plant languished on 

 its lenten diet, whilst the beefeater flourished on its more sub- 

 stantial fare. 



The plants to which I have alluded being furnished, some 

 with organs for the prehension, and others with pouches for 

 the retention of matters that are or may be used as sustenance, 

 perhaps approach the nearest in their structure to that involu- 

 tion and appropriation of a part of their surface, for the espe- 

 cial purpose of retaining food, and absorbing thence its nutri- 

 tious particles, of any that we at present know ; and, conse- 

 quently, are the nearest approaches, the strongest adumbra- 

 tions (slight as they are) that we meet with in the vegetable 

 kingdom, of an organ so prevalent among animals as to have 

 been thought their peculiar characteristic, viz. a stomach. 

 The gradations of this prime nutritive apparatus, both in 

 brutes and plants, is curious, from the general use of the entire 

 surface to the special ordination of a particular organ, which 

 organ becomes progressively more or less involved, as it is 

 more or less essential and important ; as in the higher types 

 almost all the systems, whether nutritive or reproductive, ordi- 

 narily are : and yet the original external cutaneous digester, 

 even in man, the highest grade of all, has not lost entirely the 

 original community of function that signalized it in the lowest 

 types ; for it not only perspires and absorbs matters hurtful 

 and salutary, but likewise forms carbonic acid with the oxygen 

 of the air, being in some slight degree an organ of respiration, 

 an external lung, as it is also a vestige of the external kidney, 

 stomach, and intestines. 



On the peculiar properties and powers of vegetable diges- 

 tion, whether the apparatus be spread over an entire surface, 

 or collected into an especial organ, I have purposely avoided 

 to dilate ; and yet this is a subject of most curious interest, 

 one to which hereafter I may probably, if time permit, return. 

 Mirbel acutely noticed, that '• Plants alone have a power of 

 deriving nourishment, though not, indeed, exclusively, from 



