THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 



profound botanist, Bonnet, who was more superficial, 

 and above all, Edward Smith, attributed to plants an 

 exquisite sensibility, and even the possession of most 

 delicate sensations. 



These ideas have found in our day ardent defend- 

 ers in two of the most celebrated savants of studious 

 Germany, Yon Martins, and Theodore Fechner. These 

 men look upon plants as sentient beings, endowed 

 with individual souls, and the latter has carried his 

 enthusiasm so far as to form a kind of vegetable 

 psychology. 



The genius of Descartes had succeeded in making 

 the masses believe that animals were nothing better 

 than simple automatons, wound up to perform a cer- 

 tain numbers of actions. Going still farther, other 

 naturalists, like the great Huler, the founder of vege- 

 table physiology, were disposed to look upon plants 

 as beings, subject to no other law but that of material 

 forces. But neither extreme finds nowadays favor 

 with men of science ; they do not look upon the chil- 

 dren of nature as mere machines, but they are as far 

 from believing that they possess souls. The phe- 

 nomena of plant life are still more or less an enigma ; 

 they cannot be ascribed to natural and chemical causes 

 only, and yet they can as little be traced back to the 

 power of a supreme and individual intellect. Only 

 one thing is certain : they are subject to a vital force 

 which controls all the springs of their existence 

 where this vital force disappears, life is at an end, and 

 destruction inevitable. 



All the savants, however, who have examined the 

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