AND ANIMAL LIFE. 93 



specious description ; but when the application 

 of these principles becomes general, or when it 

 is pushed to the extreme, the variety and promi- 

 nence of objects immediately expose their in- 

 efficiency or incorrectness ; and 1 regret to say, 

 that the principles which we have examined in 

 this chapter, are an illustration of the opinion. 



LXXVIII. Secretion, agreeably to the doctrine 

 of WILSON PHILIP, depends on the operation of 

 the nervous power. " To this (he says) it may 

 be objected, that plants and the less perfect ani- 

 mals have no nervous system. Would it not be 

 more correct to say, that the operation of their 

 nervous system is more confined ? Wherever se- 

 cretion is performed, the nervous influence, or a 

 power resembling it, must exist."* 



That the phenomena belonging to secretion 

 are attributable to nervous influence, or a power 

 resembling it, is a gratuitous assumption. It has 

 never been proved that plants are endowed with 

 nerves ; and yet we perceive that they are cap- 

 able of affecting the air in much the same man- 

 ner as animals ; they have an ascending and de- 

 scending circulation ; they have radicles which 

 select and absorb what is beneficial to their 

 growth ; and the leaves which they possess ope- 

 rate as lungs on the materials conveyed ; and these, 

 after proper elaboration, are appropriated to the 

 various systems of the vegetable, which, in their 



Ibid. p. 258. 



