ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 271 



DO VARIETIES OF FRUIT RUN OUT. 



Is there such similarity between animals and vegetables, 

 in their organic structure, development and functions, as 

 to make it safe to reason upon the properties of the one 

 from the known properties of the other ? 



It is admitted that the lowest forms of vegetable exist 

 ence are extremely difficult to be distinguished from a cor 

 responding form of animal existence. As we approach the 

 lower confines of the vegetable kingdom, flowers, and of 

 course, seeds, disappear. The distinction between leaves 

 and stem ceases ; and, at last, the stem and root are no lon 

 ger to be separated, and we find a mere vegetable sheet or 

 lamina whose upper surface is leaf and whose lower surface 

 is root. In a corresponding sphere, animal existence is re 

 duced, to its simplest elements. Whatever resemblances 

 there are in the lowest and rudimentary forms of vegetable 

 and animal life, it cannot be doubted that when we rise 

 to a more perfect organization, the two kingdom be 

 come distinct and the structure and functions of each are 

 in such a sense peculiar to itself, that he will grossly mis 

 conceive the truth who supposes a structure or a function to 

 exist in a vegetable, because such structure or function 

 exists in an animal, and vice versd. To be sure, they resem 

 ble in generals but they differ in specials. Both begin in a 

 seminal point but the seed is not analogous ; both develop 

 but not by an analogous growth ; both require food, but 

 the selection, the digestion and the assimilation are differ 

 ent. The mineral kingdom is the lowest. Out of it, by 

 help of the sun and air, the vegetable procures its materials 

 of growth ; in turn the vegetable kingdom is the magazine 

 from which the animal kingdom is sustained ; to each, thus 

 the soil contains the original elements ; the vegetable is the 

 chemical manipulator, and the animal, the final recipient of 

 its products. The habit of reasoning from one to the other, 

 of giving an idea of the one by illustrations drawn from the 



