io6 OF VEGETABLE ANIMATION. SECT. XIII. i. 



-tii! 



SECT. XIII. 



OF VEGETABLE ANIMATION. 



I. i. Vegetables are irritable* mimofa, dioncca mufci- 

 pitla. Vegetable fecretions. 2. Vegetable buds are 

 inferior animals^ are liable to greater or lefs irrita- 

 bility. II. Stamens and piftils of plants /hew marks 

 of jenfibility. III. Vegetables poffefs fome degree of 

 volition. IV. Motions of plants are affociated like 

 ih of e of animals* V. i. Vegetable ftruElure like that 

 of animals > their anthers and fligmas are living crea- 

 tures. Male- flowers of Vaiiifneria. i. Whether 

 'vegetables poffefs ideas ? *They have organs of fenfe as 

 of touch and f melt 9 and ideas of external things ? 



I. |. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well 

 as thofe of the animal, are excitable into a variety 

 of motion by irritations of external objects. This 

 appears particularly in the mimofa or feniitive plant, 

 whofe leaves contract on the flighted injury ; the 

 dionsea mufcipula, which was lately brought over 

 from the marfhes of America, prefents us with 

 another curious inflance of vegetable irritability ; 

 its leaves are armed with fpines on their upper edge, 

 and are fpread on the ground around the flem ; 

 when an infect creeps on any of them in its paffage 

 to the flower or feed, the leaf {huts up like a fleel 

 rat-trap, and deftroys its enemy. See Botanic 

 Garden, Part II. note on Silene. 



The various fecretions of vegetables, as of odour, 

 fruit, gum, refin, wax, honey, feem brought about 

 in the fame manner as in the glands of animals ; 

 the taflelefs moifture of the earth is converted by 

 the hop-plant into a bitter juice > as by the cater- 



pillar 



