PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. 211 



and their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring ; 

 and lastly, that the anthers and stigmas are real animals 

 attached to their parent tree like polypi or coral insects, 

 but capable of spontaneous motion; that they are 

 affected with the passion of love, and furnished with 

 powers of reproducing their species, and are fed with 

 honey like the moths and butterflies which plunder 

 their nectaries.* 



" The male flowers of Vallisneria approach still 

 nearer to apparent aniniality, as they detach them- 

 selves from the parent plant, and float on the surface of 

 the water to the female ones, f Other flowers of the 

 classes of moncecia and dioacia, and polygamia discharge 

 the fecundating farina, which, floating in the air, is 

 carried to the stigma of the female flowers, and that at 

 considerable distances. Can this be effected by any 

 specific attraction? Or, like the diffusion of the 

 odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents of 

 the winds, and the accidental miscarriages of it counter- 

 acted by the quantity of its production ? 



" 2. This leads us to a curious inquiry, whether vege- 

 tables have ideas of external things ? As all our ideas 

 are originally received by our senses, the question may 

 be changed to whether vegetables possess any organs of 

 sense ? Certain it is that they possess a sense of heat 

 and cold, another of moisture and dryness, and another 

 of light and darkness, for they close their petals occa- 

 sionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or dark- 

 ness. And it has been already shown that these actions 



* See ' Botanic Garden, part L, add. note, p. xxxix. 

 t Il'id., part ii., art. "Vallisneria." 



p 2 



