ON PLANTS. 97 



Aristotle's time, but was disproved by Joachim Junge 

 (1587-1657). In Cap. 2 of Fragment v., on the hfe of 

 plants, in his De Plantis Doxoscopice Phijsicce Minores, he 

 says that plants have their own waste products, and asks 

 who would assert that plants have the peculiar property of 

 drawing from the soil that only which is suitable for their 

 own material.* 



Aristotle says that plants do not respire,! but it should be 

 borne in mind that he did not believe that any living thing 

 respired unless it had lungs. It was on this account that 

 he held that fishes, crustaceans, molluscs, and many other 

 animals did not respire. Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Democritus, 

 and other ancient philosophers believed that all living things, 

 or, at least, all animals, respired. This is asserted by 

 Aristotle, when discussing the views of others on respiration.! 

 Brisseau-Mirbel says that Anaxagoras believed that the 

 leaves of plants absorbed and gave out the air.§ There does 

 not seem to be any extant fragment of Anaxagoras which 

 sets out the action of the leaves in this manner, but in the 

 Aristotelian treatise, De Plantis, i. c. 2, it is stated that, 

 according to Anaxagoras, plants also have ■b-vow, a breath or 

 exhalation. 



Aristotle says that plants are not affected by sleeping and 

 waking (since they are without sense organs or sensation), 

 but by what must be considered to be like sleep. || This 

 is consistent with his belief that although plants have no 

 sensation yet they are affected, as stated before, by certain 

 influences. There is nothing to show that he was referring 

 to the phenomenon of sleeping and waking, evidenced by 

 the drooping and closing of flowers in the evening and their 

 expansion in the morning. 



According to Aristotle, there was no distinction of sexes 

 in plants, but the male and female principles or powers were 

 blended in them, so that they generated from themselves, 

 the products of generation being the so-called seeds, ^ which 

 were produced from the superfluous foodof the plants.** 

 Some plants, however, present a certain small difference like 

 a sexual difference, for they do not bear fruit but contribute 

 to the ripening of the fruit of other trees, such as, for 



'■^' Joachimi Jungii Optisciila Botanica-Physica, Coburg, 1747, p. 147. 



I De Anima, i. c. 5, 4106. | De Eespir. c. 2, 4706. 



§ Elemens de Physiol, veget. et de Botanique, Paris, 1815, p. 503. 



II De Somno, dc, c. i. 454a and 6. IT G. A. i. c. 23, 731a. 



** P. A. ii. c. 3, 650a; iv. c. 5, 681a. 



H 



