368 



F A R M E R S' REGISTER 



[No. 6 



it here, that a man may be an excellent chemist, 

 and a miserable physiologist; and that his notion 

 of the life of animals being a sub-agent of some 

 governing superior principle, will carry him just 

 as far beyond the bounds of common sense, as of 

 orthodoxy. This is reviving the Archaeus of Van 

 Helmont, and the Anima of Stahl. That the su- 

 perior immaterial principle which is usually as- 

 cribed to man, as a characteristic of his species, is 

 common to the whole tribe of animals from the 

 human being to the musquito, the oyster or the 

 earth-worm, is an opinion not warranted by known 

 facts or sound phdosophy. 



The best account we can give of a vegetable 

 and animal, is nearly that o(' Mr. Keith, in his 

 Sybtcm of Physiological Botany, (Vol. II, p. 471. 

 London, 1816.) 



j1 vegetable is an organized and living sub- 

 stance, springing from a seed or a germ which it 

 reproduces: effecting the development of its parts 

 by the introsusception and assimilation of unor- 

 ganized matter, derived from the soil by means 

 of the roots, or from the atmosphere by the ac- 

 tion of the leaves; and possessing fibres irritable 

 and contractile on the application^Df stimulus; but 

 possessing no nervous apparatus, serving as the 

 organ of feeling or of voluntary locomotion. 



jln fl?wmflZisan organized and living substance, 

 springing from an egg, or embryo, which it again 

 produces; efiecting the development of its parts by 

 means of the introsusception of organized sub- 

 stances or their products: possessmg fibres irrita- 

 ble and contractile on the application of stimulus; 

 and a nervous apparatus, the organ of perception 

 or feeling, of intellect, of moral qualities, arid of 

 voluntary motion. 



Animal matter can generally be distinguished 

 from vegetable m&tter,'\v the strong phosphoric 

 odor which the former does, and the latter does 

 not exhale while burnino-. 



and the sea-horse, or the white bear, companions ot 

 the same climate.] 



" Vegetables may be truly said to be living systems 

 in this sense, that they possess the means of" convert- 

 ing the elements of common matter into organized 

 structures, both by assimilation and reproduction." 

 [In the name of common sense what are these but the 

 peculiar and characteristic powers of life? Of life, 

 acting independently in these respects of any law of 

 mechanical or cbeinlcal philosophy? Is the production 

 of progeny one of the common physical agencies?] 

 " But we must not sutler ourselvesto be deluded by the 

 very extensive application of the word life, to conceive 

 in the life of plants, any power similar to "that producing 

 the life of animals. In calling forth the vegetable func"^ 

 tions, physical agents alone seem to operate; but in 

 the animal system, these agents are made subservient 

 to a superior principle. To give the argument in 

 plainer language, there are few philosophers who 

 would incline to assert the existence of any thing im- 

 material in the vegetable economy"— [no more tlian in 

 the animal economy of a elephant, or a sponge.] 

 " Such a doctrine is worthy only of a poetic form. 

 The imagination may easily give dryads to our trees, 

 and sylphs to our flowers, but neither dryads nor 

 sylphs can be admitted in vegetable pbysiologv ; and 

 for reasons nearly as strons:, vriiabiliti/ and aniinaiion 

 ought to be excluded." [Upon this strange asseition, 

 it will not be unfair to observe, that SirH. Davy ought 

 to have furnished more unexceptionable reasons, in 

 support of an opinion, contradicted by every known 

 botanist and physiologist, during a centurv past, and 

 universally rejected in the present day.] 



It is probable that the decompositions and com- 

 binations which take place during digestion, assi- 

 milation and secretion, both in animals and vege- 

 tables, are results of galvanic action, put in force 

 by the principle of life; but no other power or prin- 

 ciple than that of life, can account for reproduction, 

 as the result of the stimulus given to the ovum, 

 the seed or the germ, by the male of every spe- 

 cie=!, both in vegetables and animals. No che- 

 mistry of the laboratory, no "physical agency" 

 can explain this. 



The introsusception, digestion, assimilation and 

 secretion of food, both in animals and in vegeta- 

 bles, are processes carried on in direct defiance of 

 all mechanical and chemical laws of action, (Sir 

 U. Davy's Physical Agencies,) chemical action 

 takes place and prevails in dead only, not in liv- 

 ing matter. The living powers of vegetables and 

 animals counteract and control chemical action. 



That irritability, contractility, and increased ac- 

 tion, can be produced in the vegetable as well as 

 the animal fibre, by the application of any stimu- 

 lating substance, is well known to botanists; par- 

 ticularly in the more maniftjst instances of the mi- 

 mosa, the dionffia muscipula, the drosera, the cac- 

 tus tuna, the berberis, the stylidium glandulosum, 

 &c. So, the action of light upon the motion of a 

 plant; the action of heat on the development and 

 maturation of leaves, flowers and fruits; the at- 

 traction of distant nutriment and moisture on roots, 

 and above all, the phenomena of impregnation 

 and assimilation, seem to have no more to do with 

 Sir Humphrey Davy's Physical Agencies than 

 they have with the phenomena of a game of 

 chess, or the music of a ball-room. Can any 

 "physical agency" account for the apparent vo- 

 luntarity that so frequently takes place in the im- 

 pregnation of the water-Illy'? Or for the sleep of 

 plants, or the incessant motion of the leaves of 

 hedysarum gyrans"? Respect for the well-earned 

 reputation of SirH. Davy, as a chemist second to 

 no other, has induced us to dwell upon this refuta- 

 tion, perhaps needlessly. We shall, therefore, 

 proceed, and in the course of our reasoning, con- 

 sider a plant as other botanists and physiologists 

 consider it, a living being. 



Manures then may act by stimulating the fibres 

 of a plant to stronger action. By inducing them to 

 eat and drink more, and digest and assimilate more 

 perfectly: as when we take pepper and mustard, 

 and salt and wine in reasonable quantity, or qui- 

 nine, when vital action is languid. Also, by ex- 

 citing the healthy living fibre to throw o& a dis- 

 eased or dead fibre; as we apply stimulant apph- 

 cations to ill-conditioned sores to excite the healthy 

 parts to slough off the diseased paits. 



The substances used that produce this efl"ect, 

 are generally lime, gypsum, salt and soap-boiler's 

 ashes. Hitherto, they have been employed em- 

 pirically; the point of view in which they are now 

 considered, was hinted at by Kirwan, in a solita- 

 ry sentence already quoted, and stated at length in 

 Cooper's edition of the Domestic Encyclopadia; 

 but no where else that we recollect. 



If these substances do not act as forming part 

 of the pabulum or food of the plant; if they do 

 not act by altering the mechanical texture of the 

 soil, there is no other mode of accounting for 

 their action than that now suggested ; unless, in- 

 deed, we recur to Kirwan's theory of their septic 

 power, which is liy no means established by ex- 



