2 THE WORD PLANT. 



and digestion of food, and no intestines. They have 

 besides no heart, and consequently no fluid like blood 

 circulating from a point and returning to the same. 

 It follows that they have no lungs, and consequently 

 do not breathe like animals, though they imbibe and 

 exhale gases. 



The movements of animals are all made by means 

 of muscles or fleshy ribands ; but plants have none of 

 these, and the only locomotion, therefore, which they 

 possess, consists in the extension of parts as in the 

 runners of the strawberry, or the rooting branches of 

 the bramble and the banyan tree ; or in the death of 

 one bulb or corm, and growth of another, as in the 

 orchis and meadow saffron. 



Animals again are all more or less endowed with 



sensibility by means of nerves ; but plants have no 



nerves, and hence, in all probability, no feeling similar 



' to animal sensations. The appearances supposed to 



indicate feeling in plants I shall afterwards notice. 



Dr. Virey remarks that the organs of reproduction 

 in animals are permanent; in plants the organs of 

 reproduction are renewed and fall off every year. 



Much ingenuity has been superfluously wasted in 

 discussions to determine whether certain productions, 

 such as the sponge and the freshwater polypus, are 

 plants or animals. It would be equally wise, as it 

 appears to me, for a chemist to set about determining 

 whether Epsom salts is an acid or an alkali ; for a 

 sponge and other similar productions may be neither 

 animal nor vegetable, and yet may contain chemical 

 principles from both. The eggs or seeds of some 

 sponges have been observed. 



