’ 
170 Bibliography. 
as = 
exist little doubt that our home-grown article might compete advan- 
tageously with the foreign one, especially in the event of a war with 
China, or other interruption of our maritime intercourse with the 
East. Whatever +. the tenor of future public affairs, the cultivation 
of the tea-plant should, under every circumstance, be carefully essayed 
in France; a fair trial should be given to it, and as it could not be 
prejudicial to other agricultural interests, requiring such a locality as 
is little adapted to other productions, I am the more disposed to think 
that it merits the encouragement and favor of government.” 
Mr. Guillemin’s attention was also directed to the cultivation of 
coffee in Brazil, but no details are given. ' 
3. The Spiritual Life of Plants—We extract the following from 
Meyen’s Report on the Progress of Vegetable Philosophy, for the 
year 1837, (published late in 1838,) as translated by Mr. Francis. It 
affords a good idea of that tendency to transcendentalism which thor- 
oughly pervades the German mind, and has found its way into physi- 
eal as well as psychological science. cutee 
«M. v. Martius* has published his views on the soul of plants, with 
which I may commence the present year’s report. It appears, observes . 
M. v. Martius, as if natural philosophers were in general not inclined 
to admit, in the essence of the plant, these two spheres, body and 
soul, as if they would concede a soul only to animals and man. — It is 
usual to regard as the essential predicate of the soul, pereeption such 
as it appears in animal life ; and, as in the vegetable kingdom, we are 
acquainted with very few phenomena which admit of our concluding 
upon a power of perception in plants, they have been declared not to 
possess a soul. Von Martius points out, that even animal forms sink 
so low in the scale of organization, that all the characteristics | -anis 
mal life disappear in them; on the other hand, indications f vegeta 
ble life display themselves ; whilst in the more highly developed vege- 
table forms, phenomena occur which belong to animal life, such, for 
instance, as the manifold various motions which have been observed 
in plants: in fact, that animal life and vegetable life appear in no way 
to be so decidedly separated from each other, and for that reasoM 
therefore, a soul cannot be admitted in animals alone, and denied to 
vegetables. Even the predominant growth and the propagation of 
plants appear to indicate that they are not confined to the circle of 
rigid necessity 5 and we must recognize in them a kind of predeter- 
mination, a tendency to the ideal, consequently a higher vital prinei- 
* Reden und Beitrage ther Gegenstinde aus dem Gebicte der Naturforschung, 
Stuttgard und Tubingen, 1838. > 
