GENERAL CHARACTER OF PLANTS. 223 



perature, is capable of destroying the tender vegetables 

 of this favored region. These plants, however, by their 

 inherent and constitutional temperament are enabled 

 to resist, like animals, the destructive and drying ef- 

 fects of the great heats to which they are exposed. 

 So, also, the trees and shrubs of cold climates retain 

 the necessary moisture of their vitality at temperatures, 

 when all other liquids freeze. 



The presence of organic life, inherited from pre- 

 ceding individuals or parents of the same species, and 

 only continued for a very limited period, under the 

 conditions of a vital movement of certain assimilating 

 fluids, like the circulation of the blood of animals, is a 

 character common to all vegetables. They have, also, 

 an inherent constitution varying with the climates and 

 the soils they occupy. They are stimulated passively 

 by light, heat, and the ingredients of the soil. Their 

 abundance appears to be infinite ; and created princi- 

 pally for the subsistence of animals, their destruction 

 as well as growth, is interminable. But, though living, 

 they are formed without sensibility, and without senti- 

 ment ; they have neither nerves nor senses, wants nor 

 pains, that are capable of any perceptible expression. 

 In the absence of nutriment they perish, with it they 

 thrive ; but show no more appearance of attachment to 

 existence, nor resistence to that which causes its des- 

 truction, than the crystal of salt does to the contigu- 

 ous agent which effects its solution or decomposition. 



