No. 1. 



Vegetable Phylosofhyi. 



15 



near the shoulder, and it never properly 

 united. Notwithstanding this, he continued 

 to write with his right hand till 1825, when 

 his arm was broken a second time, and he 

 was then obliged to have it amputated ; but 

 not before a general breaking up of the 

 frame had commenced, and the thumb and 

 two fingers of the left hand had been ren- 

 dered useless. He afterwards suffered fre- 

 quently from ill health, till his constitution 

 was finally undermined by the anxiety at- 

 tending on that most costly and laborious ofi 

 all his works, the Arbnrcium Britanvicum, 

 which has unfortunately not yet paid itself. 

 He died at last of disease of the lungs, after 

 suffering severely about three months ; and 

 he retained all the clearness and energy of 

 his mind to the last. 



His labours as a landscape-gardener, are 

 too numerous to be detailed here ; but that 

 which he always considered as the most 

 important, was the laying out of the Arbo- 

 retum, so nobly presented by Joseph Strutt, 

 Esq., to the town of Derby. 



Never, perhaps, did any man possess more 

 energy and determination than Mr. Loudon; 

 whatever he began he pursued with enthu- 

 siasm, and carried out, notwithstanding ob- 

 stacles that would have discouraged any 

 ordinary person. He was a warm friend, 

 and most kind and affectionate in all his 

 relations of son, husband, father and bro- 

 ther; and he never hesitated to sacrifice 

 pecuniary considerations to what he consi- 

 derated his duty. That he was always 

 most an.xious to promote the welfare of gar- 

 deners, the volumes of this Magazine bear 

 ample witness ; and he laboured not only to 

 improve their professional knowledge, and 

 to increase their temporal comforts, but to 

 raise their moral and intellectual charac- 

 ter. — From the Gardeners' Masrazine. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



Vegetable Physiology. 



I HAVE brought together from an article 

 in Paxton's Magazine of Botany, a few 

 paragraphs which have been to me particu- 

 larly interesting, and I would have forwarded 

 the whole, had it not only been, as I appre- 

 hend, rather too much extended for the 

 Cabinet, but also too thoroughly scientific 

 in its character for a work, which I suppose 

 is meant to be practical, and common-place 

 in its bearings. There are ten thousand of 

 the commonest things around us, calculated 

 to awaken inquiry, and to convince us, that 

 after all our efforts, we can but tread upon 

 the threshold of nature's grand laboratory 

 of secrets. Yet to the active and inquisi- 



tive, it is ever delightful to approach aa 

 near as we may, and lift the veil, looking 

 underneath for those "causes of things" 

 which Lord Bacon says, are certainly re- 

 vealed to none but such as seek assiduously 

 for them. How beautiful is the progress, 

 and how wonderful, from the first germ to 

 the root, and the stem, and the leaf, and the 

 flower and the fruit — we every day witness 

 j their developements, and pass them by, as 

 j things so common, that we almost forget to 

 I inquire into the economy which so easily 

 I brings about results, in themselves so abun- 

 dantly worthy of admiration. But I did not 

 I mean to read a lecture of my own, but to 

 'give the extracts from Paxton. 

 I " The utmost extent to which our investi- 

 Igations enable us to attain, is very remote 

 from knowledge. Can it then be deemed 

 j surprising, that very few professional gar- 

 deners are acquainted with the structure of 

 the plants they cultivate? When the time 

 of any person is almost entirely occupied in 

 works of manual labour, how is it possible 

 that he shall be able to bend his mind to 

 severe investigation of a dark and myste- 

 rious subject? And such is Vegetable Phy- 

 siology. 



" The root, radix, is the organ of nourish- 

 ment, that by which a plant is attached to 

 the soil, and absorbs the crude sap. It, in 

 general, appears to be the first develope- 

 ment of vegetable vitality, since the radicle 

 is protruded from a seed into the ground, 

 before the stem ascends. A beautiful ex- 

 ample of this is furnished by a fresh fallen 

 acorn being suspended in a hyacinth glass, 

 just above the surface of the water, with 

 which the glass is to be previously three 

 parts filled. 



" If cuttings of any free rooting plant, as 

 of the horse-shoe geranium, be inserted in 

 a phial of water, and kept at a heat of 60°, 

 it will be seen that a ring of the substance 

 called callus, is gradually formed between 

 the bark and the wood, portions of which 

 become granular, prominent, and acquire 

 length. These protrusions are roots, and 

 with them the cutting becomes a plant; 

 hence we infer that the root is the first vi- 

 talised production of vegetable germs, and 

 though a cutting be a portion of secondary 

 developcment, it is only a mutilation, and 

 nothing better, till some vitalised pre-organ- 

 ised germs be brought into action in the 

 form of roots. 



" The reader will perceive by the above 

 attempted definition, how much the mind 

 labours in its endeavour to explain phenom- 

 ena which are hidden in mystery! what 

 children we are! talking of knowledge, and 

 yet displaying our utter ignorance of causes 



