478 



I am not able to understand by what process it is ascertained, that, 

 after the leaves of the plant are formed, it ceases to draw any nourish- 

 ment from the earth. This is a fact in vegetable physiology, of which 

 at present we are without the proof. Dr. Dana has never denied that 

 plants receive much of their nourishment from the air. His inquiries 

 were limited wholly to what they gather from the earth. Nor is there 

 any difficulty in the supposition that geine may serve, in its decom- 

 position, as the food of plants. For, if geine, according to Dr Jack- 

 son, is a mixture of crenic or apocrenic acids, and if crenic and apoc- 

 renic acids are resolvable into carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, 

 these are the very elements of vegetable substance ; and we may leave 

 it to the subtile operations of the vital action, wonderful and mysterious 

 as it is in its operations, to accomplish what human skill and sagacity 

 have as yet in vain essayed, the separation and appropriation to itself, 

 by the living plant or animal, of the proper materials of its own growth. 



Tt is exceedingly gratifying to see men of science engaging in these, 

 I will not say humble, for scarcely any are more important, but use- 

 ful subjects of investigation. Every department of nature abounds in 

 matters of interesting inquiry ; and none more than that of organic 

 life. Nature in her various changes, transformations, and productions, 

 is everywhere full of the miracles of wisdom, power and goodness. 

 The perfections of the Creator are written all over her in letters of liv- 

 ing light. The highest duty of rational beings is " to read, mark, 

 learn, and inwardly digest them." 



In looking at the infinitely multiplied productions of the vegetable 

 world, in observing a small seed rising into a towering plant, an acorn 

 changed into an oak, and what seems a pellicle, driven about by the 

 wind, growing up into a wide-spreading elm, we must be lower than the 

 beasts, which repose under its grateful shade, if we do not ask. How 

 do these things come ? When we see the earth in a measure obedient to 

 our commands, and in return for our labor pouring into our lap the 

 means of subsistence and luxury with an unstinted liberality ; when we 

 see the dependence everywhere existing between what we do and what 

 we receive, what we sow and the harvest we gather ; when we observe 

 the changes of the seasons, and the obvious elTects of light and heat, 

 and moisture and manure, we can hardly claim the character of ra- 

 tional beings, if we do not seek to understand these things. Tt is idle 

 to preterul that the mysteries of nature are too sacred for inquiry. 

 The gift of understanding and the power of its use imply the duty of 

 inquiry. It is as idle to pretend, that they arc mysteries which never 



