Spontaneous Vitality of Microscopic Animals. 5 



decompositions and new combinations by a chemical process. Some 

 parts of it are however absorbed by the lacteals as fast as they are 

 produced by this process of digestion; in which circumstance this 

 process differs from common chemical operations. 



In vegetable nutrition the organic matter of dead animals, or ve- 

 getables, undergoes chemical decompositions and new combinations 

 on or beneath the surface of the earth ; and parts of it, as they are 

 produced, are perpetually absorbed by the roots of the plants in contact 

 with it; in which this also differs from common chemical processes. 



Hence the particles which are produced from dead organic matter 

 by chemical decompositions or new consequent combinations, are 

 found proper for the purposes of the nutrition of living vegetable and 

 animal bodies, whether these decompositions and new combinations 

 are performed in the stomach or beneath the soil. 



For the purposes of nutrition these digested or decomposed recre- 

 ments of dead animal or vegetable matter are absorbed by the lacteals 

 of the stomachs of animals or of the roots of vegetables, and carried 

 into the circulation of their blood, and these compose new organic 

 parts to replace others which are destroyed, or to increase the growth 

 of the plant or animal. 



It is probable, that as in inanimate or chemical combinations, one 

 of the composing materials must possess a power of attraction, and the 

 other an aptitude to be attracted; so in organic or animated composi- 

 tions there must be particles with appetencies to unite, and other par- 

 ticles with propensities to be united with them. 



Thus in the generation of the buds of trees, it is probable that 

 two kinds of vegetable matter, as they are separated from the solid 

 system, and float in the circulation, become arrested by two kinds of 

 vegetable glands, and are then deposed beneath the cuticle of the 

 tree, and there join together forming a new vegetable, the caudex of 

 which extends from the plumula at the summit to the radicles be- 

 neath the soil, and constitutes a single fibre of the bark. 



These particles appear to be of two kinds; one of them possessing 

 an appetency to unite with the other, and the latter a propensity to 

 be united with the former ; and they are probably separated from the 

 vegetable blood by two kinds of glands, one representing those of the 



