THE LIBRARY. 73 



nothing created. These mines of coal, of which London 

 consumes annually six millions of tons what are they 

 but immense antediluvian woods hidden by geological 

 deposits? We can fully enter into the views expressed 

 when interpreting, for the first time, the movement of the 

 locomotive on roads, Stephenson said to Buckland, who 

 was looking on with astonishment, " Do you know what 

 gives movement to this machine ? The sun, which more 

 than than two million years ago darted to earth with its 

 rays of light, those same fires which are now to-day con- 

 verting the water into steam." 



'Blissful nations are ye in which all the importance 

 which it deserves is allotted to the vegetable kingdom, 

 and in which it is studied in its different manifestations, 

 with a view to secure to it all the means of life which it 

 requires. Nations in which a tree is sacred, and forests are 

 not devastated to meet some momentary requirement, 

 without any eye for the future ! Base spirits are they which 

 reckon for merit their hardihood, and their ignorance for 

 glory ! 



'A proof of the attention which is nowgiven to these is sup- 

 plied by the fact that the most abstract theories have been 

 under discussion, and even such as the satisfactory deter- 

 mination of which would, as their only consequence, have 

 brought about a scientific triumph ! Known to every one is 

 the marked fixity with which the root tends towards the 

 centre of the earth, and the stem towards the zenith 

 a constancy which was made the more manifest by the 

 experiments of Duhamel and Dutrochet. Well then, the 

 attempt has been made to gain an explanation of this, Astrue 

 supposing that it was due to an accumulation of sap ; 

 Dodar believing that the sun attracted the stem, and the 

 earth the roots ; La Hire imagining that the roots direct 

 themselves to the centre of the earth, dragged down by the 

 weight of the nutritious sap, which is reduced to a state of 

 vapour in the stem, through the effect of the elaboration of 

 the plant ; Darwin attributing it to humidity ; and Knight 



