120 IRRITABILITY. 



this ; first reminding the student, in the words of an elo- 

 quent writer of our own country, (substituting plants for 

 animals) " That if to this mode of reasoning it is objected 

 that it would go to establish an immaterial principle in 

 vegetable beings, I have only to answer, Be it so. 

 There are in some plants phenomena, with regard to 

 which we contend, that they are entirely distinct from 

 anything we know as the properties of matter." " One 

 of the most truly philosophical botanists of our 

 own time, Von Martius, has endeavoured to prove the 

 connection of a mental principle with the body of plants, 

 but which with the great mass of botanists will scarcely 

 find acceptance, but in truth he has not gone too far, 

 for as he himself remarks, the animal form sinks so low, 

 as to have extinguished all qualities of animal life, and 

 to exhibit on the other hand, the expressions of vegeta- 

 ble existence ; and as if returning again, phenomena are 

 to be seen in the more highly developed plants which 

 belong to animal organization. Animal and vegetable 

 life seem by no means to be sharply divided from each 

 other, for we cannot, in every case, certify a mind 

 to the one, or deny it to the other. The mind of plants 

 is far simpler than that of animals, or can only be com- 

 pared with that of the lowest of the scale. We figure 

 to ourselves the mind, or psychological principles of the 

 Planarise, Polypi, Ifusoria, etc., and the existence of 

 which we have no positive reason for denying; and 

 if we call to mind the intelligent animating principle 

 of a Sensitive plant or of an Oscillatoria, we shall 

 find the belief of the existence of a mental principle 

 in plants no longer a laughable hypothesis. If we 

 regard the plastic conditions of the fertilization of 

 plants, we shall find that the descent of the pollen- 

 tube, along the canal of the style, its course through the 

 cavity of the ovarium, and its entrance through the open- 

 ing of the coats of the ovule into the interior of the 

 nucleus itself, are movements more complicated, and, if 

 we may so express ourselves, more intellectual than the 

 movements of many lower animals, at least the formative 



