THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. 237 



animal life appears to be a hollow globular body. Consequently when 

 the effort to attain a higher unity or a more perfect organization 

 presses several of these globuli, possessing solid though weak sur- 

 faces, one toward the other, the surfaces, by mutual pressure, are ne- 

 cessarily modified into different geometrical angular bodies*. In the 

 most imperfect plants we observe, as a consequence of an imperfectly de- 

 veloped internal structure, that in their single cells, which press each other 

 but slightly, the globular form prevails, although on account of the linear 

 direction peculiar to plants (see p. 235) it is elongated into the'ellipsoid ; 

 while in the more perfect plants, on the contrary, the single cells of 

 their tissue appear, in consequence of the mutual pressure, in the form 

 of regular dodecahedrons. Looking upon the cellular formation as the 

 basis of the whole plant, and considering that the plant itself in its 

 primitive destination is dependent on its relation to the planet and its 

 unity (gravitation), we are fully entitled to identify the anatomical 

 system of the cellular tissue f, as the proper reproductive system of the 

 plant, with terrestrial gravitation and the planetary body itself, inas- 

 much as that principle may be considered the basis of the whole organ- 

 ism of the earth. But since, in the organism of the earth, light and 

 air, as constituting a second integrant part, stand opposed to gravita- 

 tion [der Nachtseite~\, and since the plant bears a relation not only 

 to gravitation but to light also (see p. 235) when its formation is comr 

 plete, it will necessarily present a second anatomical system, namely 

 that of the spiral vessels, which have been very justly considered of 

 late as the organs that perform in plants the functions of nerves. 

 The lower plants, which want no light for their development, are not 

 provided with spiral vessels ; in the more perfect plants, on the con- 

 trarj^ the spiral vessels are as essential a part of the organization as 

 the cellular tissue. In fine, between both these systems of the cellular 

 tissue and the spiral vessels (the earth and water system, and the light 

 and air system, as they are called by Kieserf ,) the epidermis stands 

 as a binding and connecting member, whose vessels appear to be 

 the more perfect intercellular ducts, and its pores the orifices of these 

 vessels J. 



As the anatomical systems of plants are therefore but very few, the 

 jnultiplicity of their external organs, which unfolds itself in the most 

 beautiful progression and regularity, is so much the more important. 

 Whilst the root, penetrating more deeply in the direction of the earth, 

 spreads itself with uniformity, the plant elevates itself more and more 

 into the light, and attains a more delicate and perfect organization ; in 

 which process it is a fact deserving most particular attention, that this 

 perfectiljility does not manifest itself in the production of new organs 



• Kieser's Grundziige der Anatomic der Planzen. Jena, 1815, p. 9. 

 + Ibid., pp. 10—19. 

 X Ibid., p. 19. 



