THOMAS ANDREW KNIGHT, ESQ. 29 



shall not decide upon ; but that you are eminently qualified for 

 such undertakings I will most readily declare. Your observa- 

 tions and experiments are all new to me, and have given me 

 infinite pleasure. I have only, therefore, to request a conti- 

 nuation of your friendly communications,, either in manuscript 

 or in print, as you may think fitting, and I promise you I shall 

 receive them with no little avidity. 



" I dare not venture to decide on the ingenious conclusions 

 you have drawn from your experiments ; they are so wholly new, 

 and so much beyond the usual range of opinions. I observe, 

 however, that Dr. Darwin, who mixes truth and falsehood, 

 ingenuity and perversity of opinions, exactly in the manner we 

 mix the ingredients of punch, has gone beyond your speculation 

 of a nervous system in plants, by suggesting that they may have 

 a brain. I confess, also, that he does not follow up his assertion 

 with half the force of reason which you adduce in support of yours. 



" Nothing appears to me likely to develope the internal 

 structure of plants so much as the analogy they bear to animals, 

 whose structure is more easily examined : nature seems in 

 organic bodies to have followed one uniform plan ; that is, she 

 has arranged a certain number of parts necessary for the 

 structure of the most perfect work of creation, and varied her 

 works, principally by subtracting something from each, from 

 the man to the mushroom, which is like a man furnished with 

 lacteals in the form of roots, but has no occasion for a stomach, 

 or for the powers of digestion. 



" Plants have no digestive powers : and putrefaction appears 

 to me to do the office for plants which digestion performs for 

 animals, by assimilating the parts of substances that have been 

 animal or vegetable ; both feed alike on what has at some 

 former period been organized, and on nothing else. 



" I hope you will not disappoint us after the hopes you have 

 given us of a visit this spring. We shall be in high beauty very 

 soon. Kew gardens will be beautiful in a fortnight's time. 



" Believe me, my dear Sir, 



" With sincere esteem and regard, most faithfully yours, 



"JOSEPH BANKS." 



