ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE TRANSMUTATIONS. 131 



lous changes, which our readers may be curious to 

 see. 



Supposed animal and vegetable metamoiphoses. 



Since the only proof of these plants being trans- 

 muted (as is alleged) into animals, appears to be 

 their acquiring motion,* and, as linger says, 

 ' swimming freely about;' we think we should be 

 equally entitled to infer that camphor is animated 

 because it moves spontaneously when thrown into 

 water. This property in camphor has not hitherto 

 been satisfactorily explained; and it would undoubt- 

 edly be better to leave the phenomena described by 

 our advocates for transmutation likewise unexplained, 

 than to leap at once to their startling conclusions.. 

 ' We might as well,' says Bory St Vincent, 

 4 astonish the world with the discovery of a fig- 

 tree transmuted into a mulberry tree, because the 

 Broussonetia, when young, has the leaves of the one, 

 and when old of the other; and by such a system of 

 observing we shall end in looking upon the oak and 

 the mistletoe as the same plant: the wand of Circe 

 could not produce more astounding consequences 



* Nees von Esenbeck. 



