I io OF VEGETABLE ANIMATION. SECT. XIII. 5 . 



cipal ftem : this experiment was repeated feveral 

 times with the leaft poffible impulfe to the plant. 



V. i. For the numerous circumftances in which 

 vegetable buds are analogous to animals, the reader 

 is referred to the additional notes at the end of the 

 Botanic Garden, Part I. It is there (hewn, that 

 the roots of vegetables refembie the lacteal fyi- 

 temof animals; the fap-veffels in the early fpring, 

 I before their leaves expand, are analogous to the 

 placental veffels of the foetus ; that the leaves of 

 land-plants refembie lungs, and thofe of aquatic 

 plants the gills of fifli; that there are other fyilems 

 of veffels refembling the vena portarum of quadru- 

 peds, or the aorta of fifti ; that the digeftive power 

 of vegetables is fimilar to that of animals convert- 

 ing the fluids, which they abforb, into fugar ; that 

 their feeds refembie the eggs of animals, and their 

 buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring. And, 

 laftly, that the anthers and fiigmas are real animals, 

 attached indeed to their parent tree like polypi or 

 coral infects, but capable of fpontaneous motion : 

 that they are affected with the paffion of love, and 

 furnifhed with powers of reproducing their fpecies, 

 and are fed with honey like the moths and butter- 

 flies, which plunder their nectaries. See Botanic 

 Garden, Part I. add. note XXXIX. 



The male flowers of vallifneria approach ftili 

 nearer to apparent animality, as they detach them- 

 felves from the parent plant, and float on the fur- 

 face of the water to the female ones. Botanic 

 Garden, Part II. Art. Vallifneria. Other flowers 

 of the claffes of monecia and diecia, and polygamia, 

 difcharge the fecundating farina, which floating in 

 the air is carried to the iHgma of the female flow- 

 ers, and that at confiderable diftances. Can this 

 be effected by any fpecific attraction ? or, like the 

 diffufion of the odorous particles of flowers, is it 

 left to the currents of winds, and the accidental 



mifcarriages 



