18 



a forge, shot into the building a few branches. These branches, which 

 entered by straight enough passages, were covered with leaves in the 

 middle of the hardest winters ; and this premature but partial vegetation 

 went through all its periods, and was already in flower when the part re- 

 mained without was beginning to bud with the spring. 



If we pass from the plant to th polypus, which forms the last link of 

 the animal chain, we find a tube of soft substance, sensible and contractile 

 in all its parts, a life and organization at least as simple as that of the 

 plant. The vessels which carry the liquids, the contractile fibres, the 

 trachese, which give access to the atmospheric air, are no longer distinct- 

 ly to be traced in this almost homogeneous substance. There is no or- 

 gan especially allotted to the reproduction of the kind. Moisture oozes 

 from the internal surface of the tube, softens and digests the aliments 

 which it finds there ; the whole mass draws in nourishment from it ; the 

 tube then spontaneously contracts, and casts out the residue of digestion. 

 The mutual independence of parts is absolute and perfect: cut the crea- 

 ture into many pieces, it is reproduced in every piece; for each becomes 

 a new polypus, organized and living, like that to which it originally be- 

 longed. These gemmiparous animals enjoy, in a higher degree than plants, 

 the faculties of feeling and of self-motion; their substance dilates and 

 lengthens, and contracts, according to the impressions they receive.- 

 Nevertheless, these spontaneous movements do not suppose, any more 

 than those of the mimosa, the existence of reflection and will ; like those 

 of a muscle detached from the thigh of a frog and exposed to galvanic 

 excitation, they spring from an impression which does not extend beyond 

 the part that feels it, and in which sensibility and contractility are blend- 

 ed and lost in each other. 



From this first degree of the animal scale, let us now ascend to worms. 

 We have no longer a mere animated pulp shaped into an alimentary tube; 

 parcels of contractile or muscular fibres, a vessel divided by several con- 

 strictions into a series of vesicles, which empty themselves one into ano- 

 ther, by a movement of contraction that begins from the head, or the en- 

 trance of the alimentary canal, and proceeds towards the tail, which an- 

 swers to the anus, a vessel from which, in all probability, are sent out 

 lateral ramifications,t a spinal mai row equally knotted, or composed of a 



by these inquiries, is almost entirely surgical. When, to make vegetation more fruitful, 

 the gardener prunes a luxuriant branch ; when the peasants of the Cervennes, as M. 

 Chaptal has observe*!, burn the inside of their chesnut trees to stop the progress of a 

 destructive caries ; when the actual cautery is applied to the really ichorous and foul ul- 

 cers of many trees, &c. it is to the organs of inward life, (or that which carries on the 

 process of assimilation) the only life of vegetables, that surgery is applied; while on 

 the contrary, in man and animals, it is to the derangement of the external organs that 

 the remedy is directed. I shall conclude this note with an observation on the wounds 

 of plants. Like those of the human body, they are much less dangerous when their 

 surface is smooth, than when their edges are hacked, torn, or bruised. Tre'es felled 

 with the saw will hardly shoot up from the stool, which always furnishes a better growth 

 when an axe has been* employed. The saw lacerates the 'vegetable texture, and its 

 violent and distressing action on the fibres extending towards the roots, affects, more 

 or less, the organization. The uneven surface of a tree felled in this manner, holds 

 wet, as injurious to the trunk, which it rots, as a too great quantity of pus, which bathes 

 constantly the surface of a wound, checks the process of granulation, and resists cica- 

 trization. Author's J\'ote. 



-j- This class of animals cannot be considered to possess a spinal marrow. The series 

 of ganglions which they exhibit, is merely the vertebral ganglia of the sympathetic 

 nerve. Copland. 



