CHAPTER I. 



OF THE GENERAL CHARACTERS OP LIVING BEINGS, AND THE 

 DISTINCTION BETWEEN ANIMALS AND VEGETABLES. 



1 . WHEN we examine any common Vegetable, we find that 

 it is composed of a number of parts, differing in their form and 

 structure, such, for example, as the stem, roots, leaves, and 

 flowers. Each of these we might again subdivide into others ; 

 the leaves, for example, into the footstalk on which they are sup- 

 ported, and the expanded portion or blade. The blade of the leaf 

 may be again distinguished into the midrib with the branching 

 veins proceeding from it (which form as it were its skeleton), and 

 the soft fleshy portion which clothes these ; and we might further 

 convince ourselves, by a little examination, of the presence of a 

 kind of skin or cuticle, which envelops the whole. Now these 

 several parts of the structure of a plant, which have their respective 

 uses in maintaining its life, the roots, for example, being to 

 suck up moisture from the soil through which they spread them- 

 selves, and to fix the whole structure in the ground, the stem to 

 convey this to the leaves, which it elevates into the air, and ex- 

 poses to light and warmth, the leaves to convert or elaborate 

 this crude fluid into nutritious sap, and the flowers to produce 

 seed by which the being propagates its race, these several parts 

 are termed the organs of which the plant is composed ; and the 

 uses of these parts the changes they perform are called their 

 functions. 



2. Now it is in the presence of these different organs, that one 

 of the chief distinctions exists, between those structures which 

 possess or have ever possessed life, and dead inert matter. In the 

 stone or the mass of metal, we perceive that every part is similar to 



