12 VITAL PRINCIPLE UNIVERSAL. 



upon the supposition tliat they are the result of high vitality, inexpU- 

 cahle if referred to the operation of mere material forces. 



One of the causes which have most embarrassed the 

 progress of cultivation is not perceiving the presence among 

 plants of this vital principle. Because plants neither walk, nor 

 fly, nor crawl ; because they are not endowed with the sense of 

 pain or pleasure ; because they neither struggle nor shriek, we 

 are too apt to forget that they are aUve, and consequently to 

 treat them as if but rods of metal or plates of leather. Once 

 grant that they are living beings, that they breathe although 

 we see no mouths, that they digest although no stomachs are 

 discoverable by common eyes, and above all things, that they 

 feel, however low their sensations may be, and half the modes 

 of cultivation employed by unskilful gardeners will stand con- 

 spicuous as palpable errors. Only show that plants are endowed 

 with a life, identical in its nature with that of animals, and men 

 must necessarily make it their first businesS'to study the history 

 of that life, and to master all which interferes vrith its healthy 

 exercise. Such a step once taken, no cultivator would poison 

 plants by a contaminated atmosphere, or paralyse them by an 

 eternal footbath of cold water, or suffocate them in places where 

 no air can reach them, or starve them by withholding the food 

 without which they cannot exist, or cram them with incessant 

 meals of heavy indigestible matter, which can but reduce them to 

 the condition of an apoplectic glutton. That power which causes 

 the bud to sprout, the leaves to form, the poUen to act, the seed 

 to produce its embryo ; which enables vegetation to breathe, 

 and feed, and grow ; which distinguishes aU organised beings 

 from the brute matter of which they consist, is the same as 

 what gives to man the high attributes of his nature. It is 

 VITALITY ; a word which so-called philosophers in their ignorance, 

 or presumption, may sneer at, but which in truth is the un- 

 known force that controls the energy of matter, and directs it 

 to special ends. It is only when cultivation is conducted with 

 a fuU appreciation of this fundamental truth that Horticulture 

 rises above the level of unreasoning custom, and acquires a 

 solid base upon which the rationaUa of the practices which 

 experience seems to sanction can be permanently secured. 



