12 MINUTES OF 



On the Structure of Vegetables. 



veo-etable life, as the germination of barley in making malt. It is probably this 

 saccharine process, which obtains in new hay-stacks too hastily; and which by 

 immediately running into fermentation produces so much heat as to set them on 

 fire; the violent fermentation of which may be partly OAving to the sugar, which 

 ■ is deposited in the joints of grass before the seeds are ripe for their nourishment, 

 and partly to a chemical production of sugar. 



At the moment when the matter of the seed, or other organized portion, has 

 received the necessary chemical preparation, — the peculiar energies of vegetable 

 life,-^-dre, by what mysterious law of nature we know not, renewed in it. The 

 peculiar energy of vegetable life, consists in its converting into peculiar 

 compounds, distributing in a peculiar mechanical arrangement, and employing 

 for the general enlargement and support of its organic structure, — whatever 

 suitable matters are presented to its proper exterior organs. 



A SEED, when put into the moist earth, by means of its vital principle, swells ; 

 -the action of the vessels is induced; heat is generated, and it becomes a living 

 plant. 



After vegetable life or irritability has thus commenced, its first energy is 

 exerted in receiving from the earth, in which the embryon is imbedded, the im- 

 pulse oftvater impregnated with various soluble or suspendible substances; which 

 its exterior organs refine to gas, as they convert it into nourishment. It is neces- 

 sarily from the earth, that the embryon vegetable takes its first nourishment; for, 

 it is imbedded in the soil. 



The farinaceous matter in the cotyledons of the seed is dissolved by the ab^ 

 sorbed fluid into a nutritious mucilage, and supplies the umbilical vessels with a 

 fluid, which is conveyed to the embryon for its nourishment. 



The plant in this manner begins to be developed, and gradually and insensi- 

 bly increases in size. The coverings, unable to resist the pressure, give way, and 

 the radicle having penetrated the small orifice or hylum, the shell at length splits 

 in two. The root then pierces into the earth, and absorbs from thence a more 



