THEIR LIFE AND AFFINITY. : 237° 
animal life appears to be a hollow globular body. Consequently when 
the effort to attain a higher unity or a more perfect organization 
presses several of these globuli, possessing solid though weak sur- 
faces, one toward the other, the surfaces, by mutual pressure, are ne- 
cessarily modified into different geometrical angular bodies*. In the 
most imperfect plants we observe, as a consequence of an imperfectly de- 
veloped internal structure, that in their single cells, which press each other 
but slightly, the globular form prevails, although on account of the linear 
direction peculiar to plants (see p.235) it is elongated into the’ellipsoid ; 
while in the more perfect plants, on the contrary, the single cells of 
their tissue appear, in consequence of the mutual pressure, in the form 
of regular dodecahedrons.. Looking upon the cellular formation as the 
basis of the whole plant, and considering that the plant itself ‘in its 
primitive destination is dependent on its relation to the planet and its 
unity (gravitation), we are fully entitled to identify the anatomical 
system of the cellular tissue}, as the proper reproductive system of the 
plant, with terrestrial gravitation and the planetary body itself, inas- 
much as that principle may be considered the basis of the whole organ- 
ism of the earth. But since, in the organism of the earth, light and 
air, as constituting a second integrant part, stand opposed to gravita- 
tion [der Nachtseite], and since the plant bears a relation not only 
to gravitation but to light also (see p. 235) when its formation is com- 
plete, it will necessarily present a second anatomical system, namely 
that of the spiral vessels, which have been very justly considered of 
late as the organs that perform in plants the functions of nerves, 
The lower plants, which want no light for their development, are not 
provided with spiral vessels; in the more perfect plants, on the con- 
trary, the spiral vessels are as essential a part of the organization as 
the cellular tissue. In fine, between both these systems of the cellular 
tissue and the spiral vessels (the earth and water system, and the light 
and air system, as they are called by Kieser}+,) the epidermis stands 
as a binding and connecting member, whose vessels appear to be 
the more perfect intercellular ducts, and its pores the orifices of these 
vesselst. 
As the anatomical systems of plants are therefore but very few, the 
multiplicity of their external organs, which unfolds itself in the most 
beautiful progression and regularity, is so much the more important. 
Whilst the root, penetrating more deeply in the direction of the earth, 
spreads itself with uniformity, the plant elevates itself more and more 
into the light, and attains a more delicate and perfect organization; in 
which process it is a fact deserving most particular attention, that this 
perfectibility does not manifest itself in the production of new organs 
_ * Kieser’s Grundziige der Anatomie der Planzen. Jena, 1815, p. 9. 
+ Ibid., pp. 16—19. 
githad., po WO 6e ‘ 
