246 PRINCIPLES OF GARDENING. [CH. VIII. 



part of the creation, even the commonest weed they 

 uproot, is so highly organized, so exhibiting intima- 

 tions of the fimctions, circulations, and secretions 

 more highly developed in the superior animals, that 

 it is not possible to point out where animal life 

 terminates, and where vegetable life begins : the 

 zoophytes connect the two kingdoms. It is abso- 

 lutely necessaiy, I think, for this to be understood 

 and felt by those who enter upon the investigation 

 of vegetable diseases, because I have a strong opinion 

 that these, in veiy many instances, are caused by 

 the plants which they infect being treated as if they 

 were totally insentiate matter, scarcely more suscep- 

 tible of injury at some periods of their growth than 

 the soil from whence they partly derive their sus- 

 tenance. 



To determine the question, whether plants possess 

 a degi'ee of sensation, is not so easy as the cursory 

 inquirer may believe ; and Mr. Tupper is much 

 nearer to tinith when observing that it is as difficult 

 to ascertain the nature of vegetable existence as to de- 

 termine what constitutes the li\dng principle in 

 animals. 



Dr. Darwin, by the aid of imaginaiy Jbeings simi- 

 lar to the Dryads and other minor deities of the 

 heathen mytholog}', has raised plants to a position, 

 in the order of nature, superior even to that to 

 which animals are entitled. Other philosophers 



