14< MINUTES OF 



On the Structure oj Vegetables. 



Equivocal generation is now by all enlightened men exploded from ani- 

 mal and vegetable life; but some of the half enlightened moderns continue to 

 liesitate with respect to vegetable life. 



It is urged that plants, although fixed to the earth they grow in; are never 

 wanting, where the soil is proper for them ; that, in many soils and situations, the 

 ^tetfrth dug many fathoms deep, will, when exposed to the atmosphere, produce a 

 variety of plants. That islands raise<l by a volcano at a distance from any shore, 

 are soon covered with grass; that mushrooms and other organized bodies, spring 

 from rotten stumps of trees, where they were never seen before; that various 

 plants rise on the foundation of old houses, when cleared of the-jubbish; and that 

 upon liming or dunging, white clover springs up in the very central parts of a wide 

 extended barren moor, though the seed of white clover has not wings to carry it to 

 a distance. They see mites in cheese; and myriads of flics and creeping things 

 ia a dunghill, or a putrid marsh. Ignorance of the naturaliiistory of these animals, 

 made way for the conjecture, that they were mere spontaneous productions, the 

 effect, not of generation, but of corruption. 



But the sexual system of vegetable generation, dtmcnstratcd and established 

 by the immortal LinnKus, has entirely banished equivocal generation from vege- 

 tables, as well as from animals; for -wheiever the principle of life exists, tbcie is a 

 peculiar organization; and as much rr^chanism is necessary to tie stiucturcof a 

 vegetable, as of a human being; and the repj;cduction of the one, is efiected in 

 the same manner as that of the other. 



Plants from their situation have been divi<]ed into terrene, subterranean, 

 aquatic, parasitic, indigenous, and exotic. 



The whole surface of the earth, the bottom of the sea, and even subterranean 

 passages, are furnished with plants. 



And there is no other way by which plants are propagated, but by seeds, 

 suckers and layers, &e, 



PlAnts, it is true, are destitute of locomotion; and by means of suckers and 



