20 FLOWERS AND FRUITS. 



It has been well remarked, that this race of plants wants but a 

 greater capability of endurance to the cold, to make them the 

 most valuable as well as confessedly the finest productions of the 

 vegetable kingdom. Unfortunately none of them will endure the 

 frost ; all have perished upon which the experiments fcr the 

 purpose of naturalizing them were tried, and in despite of the 

 most persevering and trying effort, they remain as they were at 

 first, Greenhouse plants. They are easily propagated by cuttings 

 from any part of the plant, whether from the old woods or new; 

 placing these in a pot filled with moderately moist earth will ensure 

 their sprouting. The only geranium possessed of much medicinal 

 properties, is the G. Maculatum, or Crane's bill geranium, which 

 is indigenous to the United States, and the purple colored flowers 

 of which are too well known to need description ; its root is a 

 highly valuable astringent. Most of the whole species are in 

 perpetual leaf; the remainder die to the ground and come up 

 annually, to flower and produce seed. This plant* emblemizes 

 ART, from its faculty of imitation. In it the student of chemistry, 

 as Phillips remarks, will see how imperfect is his art in comparison 

 with natural chemistry, which distils from the earth and conveys 

 by distinct channels, in its small stems, all that is necessary to 

 produce foliage, flowers, and fruit, together with color, smell, arid 

 taste, the most opposite fluids and liquids being separated only by 

 divisions so small as scarcely to be deemed a substance. And the 

 research into the wonders of this, as well as every other species of 

 vegetation, may be entered into without hurting the sensibility of 

 the most tender feeling, as plants and roots may be dissected with- 

 out those disagreeable sensations, which follow the dissection of 



O 7 



animals. 



"Each secret spring, each organ let me trace, 

 That mock the proudest arts of human race; 

 Completes! toil from endless source that rose, 

 Each worth a world ; for eac!i the Godhead shows," 



