LECTURE I. n 



distinguished from vegetables, and there are few 

 instances in which we can suppose a person in the 

 least danger of confounding them. Yet there are 

 many indistinct approximations between animals 

 and vegetables, exclusive of the real or acknow- 

 ledged connecting links. Thus there are many 

 animals which are nearly as torpid as the major 

 part of vegetables : and again, there are some 

 vegetables which seem almost to trench upon the 

 properties of animt^is, by their peculiar motion on 

 being suddenly irritated ; thus, the Dionsea Mus- 

 cipula, or Vcnus's Fly-Trap, an American plant, 

 well known to all who are conversant with the 

 science of Botany, is furnished with leaves pos- 

 sessed of so strong a degree of irritability, as to 

 confine, by their sudden contraction, any small 

 animal which happens to alight upon them ; and 

 the Hedysarum gyrans, an East-Indian plant, of 

 the papilionaceous or pea-bloom tribe, seems to 

 possess a kind of voluntary motion in the small 

 leaves situated on each side the base of the larger 

 ones. In general, however, the distinction be- 

 tween animals and vegetables is too striking to 

 admit of any hesitation, and it would be a mere 

 loss of time, in the short space allotted to our pre- 



^CET. I. C 



