262 Vegetable Ilepr( dudion, etc. [June, 



the most distinguished authorities in that science, among which the 

 name of the English savant, Eobert Brown, fills a foremost place. It 

 should be remembered, however, that the latest periods of this science 

 have been greatly progressive. Led forward by a distinguished band of 

 physiologists and philosophers, Botany has of late materially changed 

 its ground, and advanced its position in this particular. No longer 

 content to walk, as in former years, in the glimmering faith of old tra- 

 ditions, and unwilling to be guided by the devious directions of obsolete 

 authorities, its present pathway is illuminated by the new light which 

 the improved microscopic lens sheds upon it. From the chilling and 

 disheartening method of former times, depending upon a dry and artifi- 

 cial nomenclature, abounding in barbarous Latin and polysyllabic Greek, 

 it has proceeded from the invention of names to the consideration of 

 things — it has, in a word, become inductive — and has thereby penetrated 

 many of the deep mysteries that formerly enshrouded the inward struc- 

 ture of the vegetable organism. By pursuing this inductive process, 

 and aided by these improved appliances, in the investigations of modifi- 

 cations and details, a chain of observations, and a succession of discov- 

 eries, have been made, which enable the human intellect to comprehend 

 more fully the essence of vegetable life. And, under this new illumina- 

 tion, vegetable life is no longer regarded as simply a lower order of 

 animal existence, but as an independent and perfect whole, instituted 

 and governed by eternal laws, which, though forever in operation around, 

 him, man is but beginning to comprehend and to realize. Theories of 

 long standing, and seemingly consolidated by time, have vanished " like 

 the baseless fabric of a dream " before the opening day of this uprising 

 orb of science ; and analogies, and parallels, and similitudes, hitherto 

 supposed to be traceable between the organisms of plants and of animals, 

 have been abandoned as but shapeless shadows cast from objects which 

 the dawn had but feebly illuminated. In this period, among other 

 things, the doctrine of the sexual characteristics of plants, and the laws 

 of the propagation and reproduction of the vegetable world, have received 

 additional and more accurate scrutiny. But, as plants were regarded as 

 a kind of compound of animal and vegetable organism, and, of course, 

 subject to a compound system of laws, they could not, in any wise, be 

 adjusted to the orderly and fundamental principles of vegetable life. 

 An accurate and full understanding of the nature of the vegetable cell 

 alone could indicate a new and brighter pathway. To the celebrated 

 German botanist. Professor Schleiden. science is indebted for first direct- 

 ing scientific attention in this direction. In his work, entitled " The 

 Poetry of the Vegetable World," on the seventy-sixth page of Wood's 



