90 HISTORICAL SKETCH. 



will insure its development, in every form, within the next twenty years, to 

 an extent more than quadruple that which has been experienced since this 

 Society Avas organized. It will therefore have, progressively, far more 

 numerous and higher duties to perform, to sustain the attitude of relative 

 consequence it has so honorably acquired ; and that all such measures as 

 may be deemed requisite for accomphshing that object will be promptly 

 adopted and steadfastly pursued, has been sufficiently guarantied by its 

 previous history ; while it may be confidently anticipated, that the means 

 and voluntary co-operation of the people will be augmented in such a 

 manner as to be fully equal to that of its prospective importance to the 

 country. 



The simultaneous explorations of the botanist, physiologist, mineralogist 

 and chemist in the vast Daedalus of the vegetable kingdom, for ascertaining 

 the characteristics, structure, organization, aliment and manner of the 

 growth of plants — the climate, position and elements of the soil most con- 

 genial to each species — and the mode of improving its fertility, have been 

 so vigorously prosecuted, since the commencement of this century, as to 

 have immensely facilitated the process, ameliorated the qualities, and 

 increased the products of rural cultivation ; and that still greater and more 

 satisfactory results will be obtained in the future, cannot be questioned, 

 when it is known that intelligent and ardent competitors, in all those 

 branches of scientific research, are continually increasing in number, with 

 far advanced points of departure, from whence they are enabled to move 

 forward, with such accumulated intelligence, as to inspire a confidence of 

 success, in much more important discoveries. 



Besides the facilities which the cultivation of the Garden affords for 

 prosecuting inquiries and instituting experiments in relation to all those 

 momentous subjects, and the pleasure and advantages derived from the 

 beauty and value of its diversified products, may be added many other 

 correlative objects equally worthy of attention. How intensely interesting 

 is the ambiguous position which is occupied by plants ; not merely from 

 being intermediate between animals and minerals, and combining the qual- 

 ities of each, but from their near alhance to the former ; for while chiefly 

 formed of the decomposed elements of minerals, they have a mysterious 

 vitality, analogous to that of animals. Pliny says, " they have, in some 

 manner, a soul, for that nothing can live Avithout one." Anaxagoras, 

 Eiupedocles and Plato attributed animal life to plants, and conceived that 

 " they were living beings ;" and the wonderful microscopic investigations 

 in embryology, recently made in Germany, and repeated by Professor 

 Agassiz and other disciples of Cuvier, in comparative anatomy, seem to 

 verify those assumptions, from the ascertained resemblance, in organization 

 and development of the ova of animals to the seeds of plants ; and thereby 

 establishing and elucidating the fact, that however various their form, all 



