GENERAL CHARACTER OF PLANTS. 221 



rent from whence they have originated, as we all 

 know by the process of budding and ingrafting ; to 

 say that these buds or grafts partake of the age and 

 accidents of the trunk on which they were evolved, 

 is improbable, if not impossible, as they can, in 

 fact, be influenced only by the stock to which they 

 are last transferred. 



But the most obvious display of vitality in the veg- 

 etable kingdom is the generation of a new race from 

 sexual intercourse, consequent on which the seed is 

 produced ; in fact, an ovum like that of the birds and 

 insects, containing a punctum saliens awaking to life 

 on the congenial addition of the requisite heat and 

 moisture. This progeny of the flowers, though spe- 

 cifically similar with the parent, is yet often subject 

 to considerable variation, as in the races of the animal 

 kingdom. 



The infant plant is, for a while nourished with a 

 ready formed supply of nutriment contained in the 

 mass of the seed, or in the infant leaves (cotyfedones), 

 which it first produces. The vortex of vitality, influ- 

 enced more or less by external causes, is now destin- 

 ed to continue its operation as long as the plant hap- 

 pens to live ; (for the death in the vegetable kingdom 

 which we see take place in a tree or shrub, is ever 

 the effect of accident, as we have already remarked, 

 that no race of vegetable beings continue to live for 

 more than a year). 



Plants, like animals, consist of fluids and solids. 

 The sap, almost similar to the veinous blood in 

 its functions, is commonly imbibed from the bosom 

 of the earth by means of the fibres of the root. 

 When it first enters its composition is very sim- 

 ple ; it is propelled upwards by a system of tubes or 

 vessels, but is not prepared or elaborated by any 

 thing like a stomach, as in animals, the fibres of the 

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