THAN PLANTSi 329 



liar species, and those not of every-day observation 

 by the public, their functions are suspended when 

 they are taken out of the earth or the water, they 

 are much less frequently seen in their active states. 

 Even in these states, the progress of vegetable ac- 

 tion is so slow that we must have an interval of 

 time before we can notice it. Some of the gourds 

 and turnips produce a great quantity of vegetable 

 matter in little time; the growth of many of the 

 fungi is still more rapid ; and in the course of a day 

 or two, the buds of a large mulberry- tree will expand 

 into millions of leaves ; but still we do not actually 

 see the motion, even in the most rapid of them ; and 

 though we watched the mulberry -tree from the very 

 first action of the buds to the full expansion of the 

 leaves, we should not be able to find out that it had 

 altered at all, if we did not remember a former state, 

 and compare that with the present. That the plant 

 acts at all is, therefore, a matter of inference, and 

 not one of immediate sensation. 



But the action of the animal is at once palpable 

 to sense, and forms so immediate a part of our 

 whole perception of it, that it is by inference we 

 conclude that it has been or can be in a state differ- 

 ent from that in which we see it. It is chiefly, if 

 not entirely, from matter in motion that we get our 

 notion of what we call power; and when we can 

 trace that motion up to any substance, but not far- 

 ther, we ascribe the power to that substance. Thus, 

 when we see a horse start off upon the ground, a 

 bird in the air, or a fish in the water, it having been 

 previously in a state of rest, we say there is a power 

 of running in the horse,, of flying in the bird, and 

 of swimming in the fish ; and though the original 

 word animal probably expresses "to breathe," or 

 "that which breathes," our common understanding 

 of it is so much associated with the fact of moving 

 without being forced on by any other piece of mat- 

 ter previously in motion, that we consider life itself 

 y Ee2 



