terest evinced with regard to these reports both in England 

 and in France by translations*, as well as by the kind transmis- 

 sion of some memoirs, which otherwise would not have come 

 so early under our view, convinces us that the naturalists of 

 those countries will feel a greater desire to possess a more 

 general knowledge of our very numerous German labours in 

 this branch of science than heretofore. 



I shall endeavour in future that the report may always ap- 

 pear sooner, perhaps in the month of March ; by which some 

 periodicals, it is true, which are constantly in arrear, will be 

 left over. In the present report we have been able to avail our- 

 selves of the valuable Annales des Sciences Naturelles only as 

 far as the September Number for 1837 5 for to the 6th of May 

 1838 we did not possess in Berlin the later numbers. I must 

 also remark, that of the larger general works which appeared 

 during the past year on vegetable physiology, such detailed 

 reports have not been given as of the smaller publications and 

 separate memoirs ; since this would have been a task beyond 

 the powers of the reporter. 



On the Spiritual Life of Plants. 



M. v. Martiusf has published his views on the soul of plants, 

 with which I may commence the present year's report. It 

 appears, observes M. v. Martius, as if natural philosophers 

 were in general not inclined to admit in the essence of the 

 plant these two spheres, body and soul, as if they would con- 

 cede a soul only to animals and man. It is usual to regard 

 as the essential predicate of the soul, perception such as it 

 appears in animal life ; and, as in the vegetable kingdom, we 

 are acquainted with very few phasnomena which admit of our 

 concluding upon a power of perception in plants, they have 

 been declared not to possess a soul. Von Martius points out, 

 that even animal forms sink so low in the scale of organiza- 

 tion, that all the characteristics of animal life disappear in 

 them ; on the other hand indications of vegetable life display 



* The English translation here referred to was puhlished in the 68th, 

 69th, 70th, and 71st Numbers of the London and Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Magazine, to the pages of which Journal 1 shall have frequent occasion to 

 refer the reader. TRANSL. 



f Reden mid Beitrage iiber Gegenstande aus dem Gebiete der Natur- 

 forschung, Stuttgard und Tubingen, 1838. 



