A CHAT ABOUT PLANTS. 121 



intended by Nature, and to which they lent, in return, life 

 and beauty? 



Botanists of old collected the material only not without 

 bestowing unceasing industry upon it, not without making 

 unheard of sacrifices, often of the very lives of devoted 

 laborers in that field of science but they were content 

 with a form only and a name. They were like the French 

 officer who, in one of the French revolutions, came to 

 Rome, and there had the good fortune to discover a highly 

 important inscription on a monument, dating far back into 

 antiquity. Proudly, and carefully, he detached one bronze 

 letter after another, then slipped them, all loosely, into a 

 bag, and sent them to the antiquarians of Paris to be 

 deciphered. 



But there have arisen, within the last thirty years es- 

 pecially, men who have studied plants with the view, not 

 only to know who they were, but rather what they were, 

 how they lived and how they died, what their relation 

 was to the world, and what their purpose in the great 

 household of Nature. Kindred sciences have lent their 

 aid ; the microscope has laid open the innermost recesses 

 of plants; travellers have brought home new, comprehen- 

 sive views, and an insight has at last been gained into 

 the life of the world of plants. Great, startling discoveries 

 have there been made, new truths and new beauties have 

 been revealed to us, and natural science has unfolded the 

 most delicate resources and most curious relations in the 

 vegetable kingdom. 



Thus we have learned, that it is a fallacy to be sure 

 as old as botany itself that plants have no motion. Aris- 



