NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 129 



of tlie electric fluid. In the marks caused by positive 

 electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see the 

 ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves ; 

 those of the negative, recall the bulbous or the spread- 

 ing root, according as they are clumped or divergent. 

 These phenomena seem to say that the electric energies 

 have had something to do in determining the forms of 

 plants. That they are intimately connected with 

 vegetable life is indubitable, for germination will not 

 proceed in water charged with negative electricity, while 

 water charged positively greatly favours it; and a 

 garden sensibly increases in luxuriance when a number 

 of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches 

 over its beds. With regard to the resemblance of the 

 ramifications of the branches and leaves of plants to the 

 traces of the positive electricity, and that of the roots to 

 the negative, it is a circumstance calling for especial 

 remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower 

 strata, is generally charged positively, while the earth is 

 always charged negatively. The correspondence here is 

 curious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed on the 

 basis of a natural electrical operation — the brush realised. 

 We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as, 

 immediately, the result of a law in electricity variously 

 affecting them according to their organic character, or 

 respective germinal constituents. In the poplar, the 

 brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent ; the 

 reverse in the beech : in the palm, a pencil has proceeded 

 straight up for a certain distance, radiates there, and 

 turns outwards and downwards; and so on. We can 

 here see at least traces of secondary means by which the 

 Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms 

 with which the earth is overspread. 



Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of 



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