20 Reviews. — LiHdley''s Theory oj HorlicuUure. 



physiology, for instance, which gives you lo understand how 

 the seed germinates, the root receives nutriment, or the fruit 

 matures, now teaches how to raise good celery for the table, 

 mammoth squashes for the kitchen, and melting peaches for 

 the dessert. Sir Andrew Knight had at his command the 

 energies of nature in raising the pine-aj)ple, that king of fruits, 

 whose head bears a leafy croicn; and from gray peas and simi- 

 lar of inferior quality, his cross impregnation brought him re- 

 sults as favorable as curious. The whole baneful hosts of 

 mildew were vanquished before his persevering hand; and 

 many a sad obstacle in the way of the mere mechanical horti- 

 culturist, fled at his approach. When M Turpin discovered 

 in the folds of his herbarium, the leaf of an ornithogalum stud- 

 ded with minute bulbs, he did not hesitate in his search, until 

 he established the beautiful fact that these embryo buds are 

 existant in myriads in the tissue of every plant: and thereby 

 explained in a philosophical manner what the cultivators of 

 bulbous roots knew before, but knew ignorantly; when they, 

 by injuring the main bulb by incision, could cause the requisite 

 increase, for the benefit of their stock of plants. Mankind 

 after all are in the mass strictly utilitarian, let sages prate as 

 they may of the divine nature of humanity: and those books 

 and pursuits will be the most readily read and followed, which 

 teach them the comforts of the social condition. 



We cannot in passing, omit to mention, w'ith gratification, 

 the good common sense displayed in some of the notes on the 

 text of the work. Theories are very well, and supposed facts 

 plausible, until met by others of a more stubborn nature. 

 One can reason himself into the truth of any proposition, until 

 a startling instance to the contrary stands in his way. Let 

 the reader compare these two passages: — 



But although, under ordhiarj' circumstances, the sap of Exogens 

 rises through the alburnum and descends through the liber, yet the 

 simplicity of structure in plants is such, that, together with the per- 

 meability of their tissue, it enables them, in cases of emergency, to 

 alter their functions, and to propel their fluids by lateral instead of 

 longitudinal communications. The trunk of n tree has been sawed 

 throusrh beyond the pith in four opposite directions; namely, from 

 north to south, from west to east, from south to north, and from east 

 to west, at intervals of a foot, so as completely to cut off all longi- 

 tudinal communication between the upper and lower parts of the 

 stem, as eftectually as if those two parts had been dissevered; and 

 yet the propulsion of the sap from the roots into the head of the tree 

 went on as before: which could only have been effected by a lateral 



