For] AND SYMBOLS. 125 



sap-corpuscles in the leaves of several winter plants (Xajades, 

 Characese, Hydrocharidae), and in the hairs of phanerogamous 

 land-plants. There is at the same time seen a confused mole- 

 cular movement, first observed by the distinguished botanist, 

 Robert Brown, but which also occurs among finely divided 

 particles of matter of all kinds, the phenomenon not taking 

 place only within organic cells ; the circular movement of the 

 globules of the cambium, in a system of special vessels 

 (cyclosis) ; lastly, the singular articulated filiform vessels of the 

 anthers of the chara, and the reproductive organs of the liver- 

 worts and sea- weeds, which have the faculty of uncoiling them- 

 selves, and in which Meyen, snatched too soon from science, 

 believed that he recognised the analogues of the spermatozoa of 

 the animal creation. If to the multifarious excitements and 

 movements we add those that belong to endosmose and the 

 processes of nutrition and growth, and farther to the penetra- 

 tion (and exhalation) of air, we have a picture of the forces 

 which, almost unknown to us, are active in the silent life of 

 the vegetable world. K. 



Foreknowledge and Prophecy. 



What decides birds to emigrate ? It is not want of nourish- 

 ment, for most begin the journey while they have abundance. 

 Those confined in cages are very restless at the time of their 

 proper migration. Atmospherical currents are not the cause ; 

 nor do the changes of season explain it, as the greatest number 

 set off while the weather is yet fine, and others, as the larks 

 and starlings, arrive while the season is bad. Atmospherical 

 influences can only hasten the migration in autumn, or retard 

 or derange it in spring. It is the foreknowledge of what is to 

 happen which determines birds to begin their journey. It is 

 an instinct which urges them, and which initiates them into 

 the meteoric alterations that are preparing. They have a par- 

 ticular faculty of foreseeing the rigour of the coming season, 

 an exquisite sensibility for atmospherical changes which have 

 not yet arrived, but are approaching. Some men are also 

 endowed by Nature with a foreknowledge which is even more 

 wonderful than that which has been bestowed upon the birds. 



