On the Physiology of Vegetables, 129 



please. But these roots do not appear to me to be separate 

 plants ; but only the foundation of the various stripes in the 

 R'ood, and the means Nature takes to secure the impossihility 

 of the female ever failing. Had they been separate plants, and 

 to serve as iifiv seeds (as he .supposes), would they not have fallen 

 into the earth to serve as such, and not attached themselves to 

 the new plant a secovd time, tliougli the embryo had already 

 escaped from it ? Thus the husk is secured, not only to supply 

 new moisture, to form a new root in case the young should be 

 destroyed hy insects ; but that the different little roots might 

 have time to run their stripes up the various parts of the wood, 

 and thus fill the new plant with the female flower. 



I am assured by some of the first botanists, that they dispute 

 not the truth of my dissections — that they believe them all to be 

 jii.it and right ; but that it is my sy stern they cannot credit. I 

 know not how this can be : I always thought that what is so 

 called, was but my drawings translated into words. However, 

 I dispute not the right each person has to explain the specimens 

 in their own way. This last will certainly admit of two different 

 constructions ; and by continuing the dissection of plants a year 

 or two longer, we may be more fitted to lay down a system that 

 may be nearer the truth than that I have attempted : yet, having 

 followed it from year to year in a regular picture, a few days 

 only intervening, no one can conceive (but myself) how exact 

 svrh a picture is. But one thing I must observe, that if the 

 drawings are true, the very opposite of the specimens cannot 

 also be just; and that most of the present received opinions are 

 in direct coiitradiction not only to Nature's established laws in 

 th.e j)hysical and botanical world, but they are also in absolute 

 contrast to the appearance of specimens I have given, and even 

 to their own also, as I shall show. 



1 shall first present two specimens of wood, given by most 

 botanists, to prove that there is 710 passage for Ike sap through 

 thevjood, as was always formerly supposed. The one is a specimen 

 given by Grew, the other by Mirbel. It would appear by a first 

 look, that large apertures fitted for the nourishment of a great 

 tree were plainly to be seen in both (see dddd, fig. 5 and 6,); 

 but our later botanists are of a different opmion, and throw 

 all the juice so large a matter would seem to require, into the 

 smallest hair the tree contains, ixud which is besides most extreme- 

 ly twisted. The reason given for it is, " that though there are 

 apparent large apertures, and well formed voids, yet, when the 

 wood is taken thread from thread, not a cylinder can be disco- 

 vered with a passage through it. This is certainly true ; hence 

 it is concluded, that, in spite of the appearance of these aper- 

 tures, there can be no passage fur liquids through the wood 



Vol. i'J. No. 226. Feb. 1817. I '»>t 



