15C ON WATER AND WATERING PLANTS. 



themselves. The vegetative particles are commixed and blended 

 in the earth, with all the diversity and variety as well as all the 

 uncertainty conceivable. 



It is not possible to imagine how one uniform, homogeneous 

 matter, having all its principles or organical parts of all the same 

 substance, constitution, magnitude figure, and gravity, should 

 ever constitute bodies so egregiously unlike, in all those respects, 

 as vegetables of different kinds are ; nay, even as the parts of 

 the same vegetable ; that one should carry a rosinary, another a 

 milky, a second a yellow, a third a red juice in its veins ; one af- 

 ford a fragrant, another an offensive smell ; one be sweet to the 

 taste, another ascid, ascerb, austere, &c. that one should be nou- 

 rishing, another poisonous ; one purging, another astringent. In 

 fact, that there should be that difference in them in their several 

 constitutions, makes, properties and effects, and yet all arise from 

 the very same sort of matter, would be very strange. And so 

 note, that by the bye, this argument makes equally strong against 

 those who suppose that mere water to be the matter out of which 

 all bodies are formed. 



The Cataputia in the glass F, received but very little increase 

 only three grains and a half, all the time it stood, though two 

 thousand five hundred and one grains of water had been spent 

 upon it ; he will not say the reason was, that water docs not con- 

 tain in it matter fit and proper for the nourishment of that pecu- 

 liar and remarkable plant. No, it may be the water was not a 

 proper medium for it to grow in ; and we know that there are 

 many plants that will not thrive in it. 



(To be continued.,) 



EXTRACT. 

 ON THE AGAVE AMERICANA. GREAT AMERICAN ALOE. 



The Aloe, that patriarch of the flowers, which " blooms once 

 in a hundred years, and whose blossom then are developed with 

 such rapidity, as to occasion an explosion resembling the firing 

 of a cannon," is the theme of a tale that all have heard from their 

 infancy, and to which many still give credence. In regard to 

 the age in which the plants flower, that is extremely uncertain, 

 and depends much upon the health of the individuals, and the 

 degree of heat to which they have been exposed. Many live to a 

 great age, and appear never to flower at all. In warm climates 



