346 On the Physiology of Vegetables. 
commenced, and begun to be formed, in the root, and are then 
carried up to the part assigned for their completion ; ; where the 
ingredients necessury for their nutriment are conveyed and sent 
up to finish them, before they are obtruded at the exterior of the 
tree or plant. I have just shown a proof of this sort of forma- 
tion, the finishing of the seed and seed-case, by means of the 
nutriment bestowed by the atmosphere, and afterwards from the 
root, mounting into the seed- vessel, the place appointed by Na- 
ture for the completion of the seach In the same manner the 
female flowers are formed in the root, then mount, and are com- 
pleted in the flower-bud, when the sced-vessels are filled with 
the seeds and the stamen with pollen. The leaves also begun 
in the root (though so very diminutive), when they quit it, re- 
move tothe leaf-bud, receive their nutriment from the heavens, 
and a deep yellow powder from the root. It is not then in one 
matter only, but in every ingredient in the plant, that this fact 
is exemplified and proved. “But it will easily appear that I can 
know this only by watehing daily, or many of the peculiarities 
would escape me. Thusall the different parts, though they have 
but one general laboratory, yet they have each a separate part 
of the plant in which their different ingredients are completed. 
Is it possible to conceive a more beautiful and more perfect sy- 
stem? the interior of a tree is the whole year as busy as an ant’s 
nest, for every ingredient is in perpetual motion to form and 
bring forward the earth’s produce :—this also admirably accounts 
for why the root has double the number of sap-vessels the stem 
has ; this is the ease in every sort of plant; and it is probably to 
provide for the formations in the laboratory. Half the sap is 
allotted to the formation of the flower, seeds, leaves, and nutri- 
ment; the other half to the increase of the size of the tree. The 
more therefore I proceed, the mere just | find the thirteen axioms 
i gave at the (almost) beginning of this work: every set of dis- 
sections seems to add to the procf of one or other of them; and 
it can scarcely be denied that this serves (with other reasons 
before given) to show the justness of two of them: First, that 
the root is the laboratory of all plants ; Secondly, that there is no 
perspiration in plants. These zre also some of the plants said 
to perspire so much, merely because the hydrogen is always forced 
from a plant the moment the vegetable is confined, and that 
meeting the oxygen which had just quitted the vegetable, and 
not being able to eseape from the glass, they unite again and form 
their original ingredient — water, on the cold glass which at- 
tracts them. . If the leaves perspired, would they not be con- 
stantly wet ? whereas they are ever dry, /ucid, and clear, except 
when dew or rain has just fallen. If liquid protruded from the 
deaves (the juice of plants is always glutinous), would not a 
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