KNOWN THAN PLANTS. 355 



of plants ; and as they move entire, and carry all 

 their functions with them, while plants do not of 

 themselves change their places, and, unless in 

 any peculiar species, and those not of every day 

 observation by the public, their functions are sus- 

 pended when they are taken out of the earth or 

 the water, they are much less frequently seen in 

 their active states. Even in these states, the 

 progress of vegetable action is so slow, that we 

 must have an interval of time before we can notice 

 it. Some of the gourds and turnips produce a 

 great quantity of vegetable matter in little time ; 

 the growth of many of the fungi is still more 

 rapid; and in the course of a day or two, the 

 buds of a large mulberry tree will expand into mil- 

 lions of leaves ; but still we do not actually see 

 the motion, even in the most rapid of them ; and 

 though we watched the mulberry tree from the 

 very first action of the buds to the full expansion 

 of the leaves, we should not be able to find out 

 that it had altered at all, if we did not remember 

 a former state, and compare that with the pre- 

 sent. That the plant acts at all is, therefore, a 

 matter of inference, and not one of immediate 

 sensation. 



But the action of the animal is at once palpable 

 to sense, and forms so immediate a part of our 

 whole perception of it, that it is by inference we 

 conclude that it has been or can be in a state 

 different from that in which we see it. It is 

 chiefly, if not entirely, from matter in motion, 

 that we get our notion of what we call power ; 

 and when we can trace that motion up to any 

 substance, but not farther, we ascribe the power 



