SECT. XXXIX. 4.8. GENERATION. 



other changes feem to have arifen in them by their perpetual 

 conteft for light and air above ground, and for food or moifture 

 beneath the foil. As noted in Botanic Garden, Part II. Note 

 on Cufcuta. Other changes of vegetables from climate, or 

 other caufes, are remarked in the Note on Curcuma in the fame 

 work. From thefe one might be led to imagine, that each plant 

 at firit confiiled of a fingle bulb or flower to each root, as the 

 gentianella and daify ; and that in the conteft for air and light 

 new buds grew on the old decaying flower ftem, (hooting down 

 their elongated roots to the ground, and that in procefs of ages 

 tali trees were thus formed, and an individual bulb became a 

 fwarm of vegetables. Other plants, which in this conteft for, 

 light and air were too flender to rife by their own ftrength, 

 learned by degrees to adhere to their neighbours, either by put- 

 ting forth roots like the ivy, or by tendrils like the vine, or by 

 fpirai contortions like the honey-fuckle ; or by growing upon 

 them like the mifleto, and taking nourishment from their barks ; 

 or by only lodging or adhering on them, and deriving nourifh- 

 ment from the air, as tillandfia. 



Shall we then fay that the vegetable living filament was orig- 

 inally different from that of each tribe of animals above defcri- 

 btd ? And that the productive living filament of each of thofe 

 tribes was different originally from the other ? Or, as the earth 

 and ocean were probably peopled with vegetable productions 

 long before the exiftence of animals ; and many families of thefe 

 animals long before other families of them, (hall we conjecture 

 that one and the fame kind of living filaments is and has been 

 the caufe of all organic life ? 



If this gradual production of the fpecies and genera of animals 

 be affented to, a contrary circumftance may be fuppofed to 

 have occurred, namely, that fome kinds by the great changes of 

 the elements may have been deftroyed This idea is (hewn to 

 our fenfes by contemplating the petrifactions of fhells, and of 

 vegetables, which may be faid, like bufts and medals, to record 

 the hiitory oi remote times. Of the myriads of belemnites, cor- 

 nua ammonis, and numerous other petrified (hells, which arc 

 found in the maffes of lime-ftone, which have been produced 

 by them, pone now are ever found in oirr feas, or in the feas of 

 other parts of the world, according to the obfervations of many 

 naturalifts. Some of whom have imagined, that moft of the 

 inhabitants of the fea and earth of very remote times are now 

 extinct ; as they icarcely admit, that a fingle foffil iliell bears a 

 fin t fimilitude to any recent ones, and that the vegetable im- 

 prciiions or petrifactions found in iron ores, clay, or fandilone, 

 which there are many of the fern kind, are not fitnilar to any 



plants 



