200PHYTEB. 



To demonstrate the nature of that vitahty which vegetables? 

 possess, is not within the compass of our present design. The 

 casual observer is too apt to ascribe to this class of the creation no 

 other vital principle than that of " vegetation," or in other wordsj 

 a gradual development or expansion of its limbs, from the germina- 

 tion of the seed throughout the various stages of its increase in 

 growth, till it arrives at full maturity. We have long since shewn 

 that the life of vegetation differs little from the vitality of the animal 

 creation ; it resides in certain principles of the organization which are 

 best understood by the effects produced in the existence of the indivi- 

 dual ; a vitality that is sustained by the due propulsion and circula- 

 tion of the natural fluids and secretions of the respective beings, and 

 which can be interrupted only at the expence of existence in the 

 vegetable as well as animal frame. There are many other points of 

 analogy between the animal and vegetable system^ but it is still 

 certain, that however closely they approximate, nature has drawn a 

 line of demarkation between them, and that the characters of each are 

 sufficiently definitive for every useful purpose of classification. 



The skeleton or bone of the Gorgoniae presents us with an 

 appearance so completely vegetable, that were we ignorant of its 

 organization in the living state, we might readily mistake it for a 

 ramose or shrubby plant despoiled of its foliage and cortex. When 

 clothed with flesh, it resembles a shrub, covered with bark, some- 

 what more regularly impressed with equi-distant pores than usual ; 

 but the twigs of plants are formed by the progressive protrusion of 

 the vegetable matter in the individual sending forth its secretions 

 towards the extremities of its frame ; the twigs of the Gorgoniae, on 

 the contrary, are the work of numerous animals, operating in 



