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delicious fruits they yield, and the raiment and shelter they 

 afford, the interesting series of changes they undergo at dif- 

 ferent seasons of the year, the support they yield to the ani- 

 mal world, their various medicinal virtues, and their nume- 

 rous useful applications in domestic economy and the arts, 

 have long rendered this branch of Natural History a popu- 

 lar and favourite object of study. Plants afford hemp, 

 cotton, flax, and many other articles employed in forming 

 clothing. Wood, of all natural substances, is the most 

 extensively employed in the arts ; it forms the frame- 

 work of cities ; and fleets, which are bulwarks of empires, 

 and convey population and the productions of commerce 

 over the globe, are built of it. Opium, Camphor, Squills, 

 Belladonna, Chincona, Jalap, Fox-glove, Ipecacuan, Rhu- 

 barb, and many other of the most active remedies em- 

 ployed in medicine, are derived from Plants ; they yield 

 also many of the most common articles of food, and the 

 most favourite dainties of the table. Spirits, wines, and the 

 various products of fermentation, are derived from vege- 

 table substances. There are few plants which do not 

 afford sustenance to some kind of animals; and as they 

 grow by absorbing inorganic matter, they are a kind of 

 laboratory, in which matter is organized to suit it for 

 the digestive organs of animals. Many plants which are 

 poisonous to one kind of animals, are the proper food of 

 another kind. Numerous species of insects reside and 

 subsist only on particular species of the Vegetable King- 

 dom, and most of the feathered inhabitants of the air 

 select the seeds and fruits of particular Plants. The 

 forests of marine plants at the bottom of the sea, are 

 covered with animated inhabitants, which depend on them 

 for subsistence, or cling to them as points of support. 

 The Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms are so intimately 

 blended at their origins, that Naturalists are at present 

 divided in opinion as to the kingdom to which many well- 

 known substances belong as the Codium tomentosum, 

 Alcyonium bursa, the Corallina officinalis, rubra, and 



