408 THE UNIVERSE. 



than the sap of a species of palm — the wme-bearing sago- 

 pahii {Sagus rinifera), which grows in Western Africa, and 

 the name of which characteristically indicates the benefits 

 it yields. This vinous sap is mild and sweet when first 

 drawn, but a few hours afterwards it ferments, and then 

 becomes a most intoxicating drink. It is very widely 

 used, and the tree yields it in profusion. The negroes 

 c[uickly fill their calabashes with it by hanging them to 

 the petioles of the leaves, which for this purpose are cut 

 off soon after their birth. 



The vegetable circulation has such energy, and the 

 liquid which it bears away is reproduced at such a rate, 

 that Scott assures us that out of certain birch-trees there 

 flows, in spring, a quantity of fluid equal to their weight. 



Looking at results so totally unexpected, Ave ask what 

 association of mysterious forces produces such phenomena. 

 If the ancients sometimes went astray in exaggerating 

 the faculties of the plant, our epoch has often fallen into 

 the opposite extreme. 



Many modern naturalists, retrograding towards the 

 Cartesian philosophy, explain the Adtal actions of the jilant 

 onlybythe intervention of purely physical or chemical forces. 

 According to some, their circulation is merely a matter 

 of capillary attraction, or enclosmosis; according to others, 

 it is a simple fermentation, or a series of electric shocks. 



But one solitary objection, one alone, immediately levels 

 with the dust all these hypotheses which the materialist 

 so zealously takes up. These physico-chemical phenomena 

 are so little the initiatory cause of the circulation, that they 

 have never yet proved adequate to reanimate life in a plant 

 which has been killed without changing the tissues ; and 

 if the causes of life were absolutely under the empire of 

 material forces, the supporters of these strange opinions 



