6l2 I'HILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1748. 



Bernard de Jussieu said, that one is from a corruption of the flower, and the 

 other of the grain.* 



It may not here be amiss to hazard a few queries. Do not all mortifications, 

 and other maladies in which there appears an extraordinaiy exuberance of matter 

 in any one part, proceed from a weakness, a want of resistance, and from prin- 

 ciples of union, which give to this vegetative force, found to reside in every 

 point of animal or vegetable substances, more play in one part than in another ? 

 For if the resistance be not equal in all parts, the exuberant matter must break 

 forth, and cause that part to decompose ; and if the habit of body be extremely 

 lax, the decomposition must continue ; and that, in a certain extraordinary de- 

 gree, he calls a mortification. To rub a wound, or any natural sore, with salt 

 and spirit, is found to be salutary, and preventive of mortifications ; and salt 

 he knows by observation, will immediately put a stop to these microscopical 

 vegetations, and cause the animals to subside motionless to the bottom : there- 

 fore it is probable, that salts and spirits are principles of union, and productive 

 of a greater resistance in the ductile matter acted on by this vegetative force. 

 High living, rich wines, &c. are preservatives against many contagious epidemi- 

 cal distempers : do not therefore these maladies arise from a laxer habit of body, 

 and a more than ordinary action of the same vegetative force ? And may not 

 these, and many other phenomena of this kind, be reduced to the same prin- 

 ciples ? 



The substance emitted from the globules of the farina faecundans of all flowers, 

 by an action he observed some years before, is also a substance of this nature, 

 filamentous, and in a vegetating state : nothing can resemble it more than the 

 fibres of most kinds of mould ; resolving all, as they do in water, into others of a 

 much finer contexture, when the vegetation, that had been before stopped by the 

 nitrous salts of the atmosphere, begins by the assistance of the water to act 

 again : and he knew, by observation, that all kind of mould is formed by a pro- 

 cess of the same nature as the growth of these microscopical plants ; and to be 

 classed consequently with them, and reduced to the same principles. 



He concludes that nothing can more perfectly than these wheaten filaments, 

 represent in miniature corals, coralloids, and other sea plants, which have long 

 been observed to be teeming also with life, and have been supposed to be the 

 work of animals, as it will appear to any one, who but inspects the figure he 

 had annexed, and recollects his description. Are not therefore all these in the 

 same class, and is not their origin similar ? See fig. 6. 



• The subject of the blight in corn has been recently illustrated by Sir Joseph Banks, in a treatise 

 accompanied with excellent engravings, showing the appearances as detected by the microscope. 

 From these observations, it would appear that the blight is occasioned by a minute parasitical plant 

 of the fungus kind. 



