NATURAL HISTORY. 11 



arise from this cause [viz. the nature of the constituent material]. 

 But I rather suspect that the true matter of which a vegetable is 

 composed is the same in all vegetables, and that the difference in the 

 properties extracted from them when dead, as gums of different kinds, 

 as also resins, are no more than so many secretions from them, formed 

 when alive, as we find in animals. 



"When those forms correspond with other properties in the body, 

 then they prove one another to be more nearly allied. If a certain 

 shape of spar denotes it to be calcareous, and if [it be] found calcareous 

 upon analysis, then there is a correspondency of properties. Chemistry 

 detects this analogy ; because it is only finding out first properties of 

 matter, or separating the first principles from one another, and then 

 saying what might be its properties in a solid form or when it formed a 

 complete body from its compound : but there it leaves its, giving us no 

 analogical assistance in either vegetables or animals ; because the 

 component parts of either prove nothing in the compound, as they do 

 in common matter. We cannot say from the analysis of vegetable 

 or animal matter, what [may be the] kind of vegetable or animal such 

 matter belongs to : there we must have recourse to another mode of 

 investigation. 



The reason why a vegetable of any particular kind is not detectible 

 by chemistry, is because vegetables are peculiar arrangements of the 

 same matter, viz. matter of one kind in all, and are all reducible there- 

 fore to the same kind by analysis. 



In animals we must observe the natural operations of the animal ; 

 and, where opportunity, does not serve us to observe Nature in her 

 operations, we must put her in the way of [yielding the means of] ob- 

 serving those natural processes 1 . We were probably led to the di- 

 stinct sexes of Plants analogically ; they being found out in this way 

 in the Date Palm ; and much in the same way we are led to the di- 

 stinct sexes in Animals. 



It is from this universal principle that different arrangements of the 

 productions of the earth have been formed ; and it is the observing 

 these affinities and distinctions that constitutes the greater part of 

 Natural History ; forming it into a science, beginning with combina- 

 tions of the most distant affinity and also the fewest in number, and 

 gradually combining nearer affinities as [knowledge of the] connexions 

 may arise, fixing appellations to each [combination or group] for the 

 further benefit of mankind. In vegetables and animals such [groups] 



1 [That is by physiological experiments, in the devising and performing of which 

 Hunter was pre-eminent.] 



