PRELIMINARY. o 



acquire an internal animal life, which they sooner or later 

 lose again : " that is to say, during the early formation of 

 the plant in the ovule, it is nourished from within like an 

 animal, and not from without like a vegetable. 



De Candolle distinguishes plants from animals by their 

 want of voluntary motion and of a stomach, with both which 

 animals are provided. This definition is open not only to 

 the objection that many plants move with as much appear- 

 ance of consciousness as some animals, but that a plant is in 

 reality an organised body composed of many stomachs ; for, 

 in a physiological sense, every vegetable cell is a stomach. 



Plants, says Achille Richard, are organised and living 

 beings which attract from the atmosphere, the water, or the 

 soil, in a word, from the media in which they are placed, the 

 food required for their support and growth, and which are 

 reproduced by bodies growing either on their external surface 

 or their interior. But this definition obviously includes the 

 whole race of infusorial animalcules. 



The definition of Endlicher (Grundziige der Botanik, p. 1), 

 namely, that living beings which grow and reproduce them- 

 selves, but which can neither move spontaneously nor feel, 

 are called plants, is merely hypothetical. Nevertheless it is 

 also that of Adrien de Jussieu. (Cows Elementaire, p. 1.) 



As to the description of a plant given by Oken, it is 

 obviously, notwithstanding its diffuseness, destitute of every- 

 thing like distinctness or precision, and tinctured with all that 

 mysticism which renders his writings so repulsive to sober 

 minds. 



" The plant/' says this philosopher, " is an organic body 

 chained to the earth ; it is only developed out of water, and 

 in the dark, in the earth ; is associated with metal, and car- 

 bon; is a magnetic needle attracted out of earth into air towards 

 light. Seeds germinate better when guarded from the access 

 of light; the radicle sinks, indeed, into the earth, because 

 it obeys gravitation and rest; but it is maintained there, 

 because the earth is moist and dark. This is a reason for a 

 plant being chained to the earth, not enough adverted to. 

 Some plants, indeed, take root in water, but water is darker 

 than air. The root has, in this respect, completely the 



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