59 



of monthly essays "We shall give our doctrine a dress partaking 



more of the popular than of the scientific garb." 



His tenets he states plainly : — "We avow Linnaeus to be our law- 

 ful chief ; and his Philosophia Botanica our rallying point and stand- 

 ard." 



In describing the seed, he likens it to an egg, and states that they 

 are "in structure, essentially the same. It (the seed) is not a dead sub- 

 stance like a pebble or a pearl ; but it is a body regularly organized and 

 arranged harmoniously into a system of vessels, glands and membranes ; 

 and it is, moreover, like a prolific egg, alive, or at least in a state of 

 fitness to be acted upon by certain external agents, which agents are 

 fire (caloric), air and water." After further comparisons, he con- 

 tinues : — " there is a small quantity of vital air in a sac, bladder or 

 partition at the big end of every bird's egg ; and we presume that there 

 is a small portion of the same kind of fiuid in every seed ; or it may be 

 oxygen in a concentrated state, which is afterwards combined with 

 caloric in the process of incubation." 



As to the food of plants, he says : — " From numerous well con- 

 ducted experiments, it appears that a mucilage, produced by the decom- 

 position of vegetable and animal recrements, constitutes the food or 

 aliment of plants. This mucilage is formed from stable manures, from 

 rain water putrified, from dew, as well as from dead animals and vegeta- 

 bles To reconcile the doctrine taught by some, that salt is the 



active principle in manures, it should be remembered that putrifaction 

 has two stages ; the first converts animal and vegetable substances into 

 a mucilage, and the second converts that mucilage into one or more 

 species of salt." 



Describing the structure of plants, he is generally very correct, but 

 some of the parts were hardly understood, for instance : — " The princi- 

 pal vessels are of two kinds, tubes and cells. The tubes run from the roots 



to the difierent parts of the plant they terminate in the cells, 



which cells contain the peculiar juices of the plant. The tubes contain 

 the sap-juice." 



He also says : — " In the root, the tubes are opened only at the 

 extreme point, and fluids cannot be absorbed anywhere else." 



