BOTANY. 



Plates 54 — 73. 



Introduction. 



Botany makes us acquainted -svitli plants, or the vegetable kingdom. 

 Plants are organized productions of nature, possessing neither sensation nor 

 voluntary motion. 



The vital actions of the plant have for their object, solely, the nourishment 

 of the individual and the continuation of the species. In animals, on the 

 other hand, life is exhibited in a more complicated manner : since we not 

 only find actions occur which are directed to same special purpose, or 

 produced by some inward impulse, but the faculty of sensation here presents 

 itself for the first time ; that is, the power of bringing home to consciousness 

 by means of the senses, the impressions of the external world. Hence we 

 term the animal animate^ the plant incuiimate ; and for the same reason the 

 functions of nutrition and reproduction possessed by both plants and animals 

 are said to be expressions of the vegetable, while those of sensation and 

 voluntary motion peculiar to the animal, belong to the animal life. 



The motions of the so-called sensitive plants, as the clover {Hedysarum 

 gi/rans), venus Fly-trap {Dioncea nmsijnda), various mimosas {Mimosa 

 jmdica, sensitiva, and others), are not spontaneous or innate, but rather 

 dependent on external influences, or else are the result of purely mechanical 

 operations, as exemplified in the bursting of seed capsules. Even if in the 

 above-mentioned movements of plants, as Avell as in the sleep of plants and 

 similar phenomena, it be impossible to deny a certain sensibility to lio-ht, air. 

 cold, heat, (fcc, j^et we need never confound such manifestations of vitahtv 

 with the conscious perceptions of the animal. 



Striking as is the difi'erence between a plant and an animal, as seen in the 

 higher organizations of both kingdoms, yet individual cases do occur in which 

 the line of distinction is very difiicult to draw ; where the entire structure 

 is so simple, that the same object has been referred now to one kingdom, 

 and now to another. It must also be noted, that this difl5culty of separation 

 lies not between the highest plant and the lowest animal, but between the 

 lowest of these ; the distinctions and distance widening between the two as 

 we ascend in the scale of structure. 



Essentials to the Existence of Plants. 



Plants in general require for their existence : 1, a soil into which they 

 may root, and from which they may derive certain materials necessary to 



ICONOGRAPHIC E.NCYCLOP.EDIA. — VOL, II. 1 1 



