92 



ON ORGANIZED BODIES, 



health, unless where they are pressed upon by the finger or some other cause 

 of resistance. 



In what part of a plant the vital principle chiefly exists, or to what quarter 

 it retires during the winter, we know not; but we are just as ignorant in 

 respect to animal life. In both it operates towards every point ; it consists 

 in the whole, and resides in the whole ; and its proof of existence is drawn 

 from its exercising almost every one of its functions and off"ecting its combi- 

 nations in direct opposition to the laws of chemical affinity, which would 

 otherwise as much control it as they control the mineral v/oiid, and which 

 constantly assume an authority as soon as ever the vegetable is dead. Hence 

 the plant thrives and increases in its bulk ; puts forth annually a new pro- 

 geny of buds, and becomes clothed with a beautiful foliage of lungs (every 

 leaf being a distinct lung in itself*) for the respiration of the rising brood ; and 

 with an harmonious circle of action, that can never be too much admired, 

 furnishes a perpetual supply of nutriment, in every diversified form, for the 

 growth and perfection of animal life ; while it receives in rich abundance, 

 from the waste and diminution, and even decomposition of the same, the 

 means of new births, new buds, and new harvests. 



In fine, every thing is formed for every thing; and subsists by the kind in- 

 tercourse of giving and receiving benefits. The electric fire that so alarms 

 us by its thunder, and by the awful effects of its flash, purifies the stagnant 

 atmosphere above us ; and fuses, when it rushes beneath us, a thousand mine- 

 ral veins into metals of incalculable utility. New islands are perpetually 

 rising from the unfathomable gulfs of the ocean, and enlarging the bounda- 

 ries of organized life ; sometimes thrown up, all of a sudden, by the dread 

 agency of volcanoes, and sometimes reared imperceptibly by the busy efforts 

 of corals and madrepores. Liverworts and mosses first cover the bare and 

 rugged surface, when not a vegetable of any other kind is capable of subsist- 

 ing there. They flourish, bear fruit, and decay, and the mould they produce 

 forms an appropriate bed for higher orders of plant-seeds, which are floating 

 on the wings of the breeze, or swimming on the billows of the deep. Birds 

 next alight on the new-formed rock, and sow, with interest, the seeds of the 

 berries, or the eg-gs of the worms and insects on which they have fed, and 

 which pass through them without injury ; and an occasional swell of the sea 

 floats into the rising island a mixed mass of sand, shells, drifted sea-weed, 

 skins of the casuarina, and shells of the cocoa-nut. Thus the vegetable 

 mould becomes enriched with animal materials ; and the whole surface is 

 progressively covered with herbage, shaded by forests of cocoa and other 

 trees, and rendered a proper habitation for man and the domestic animals that 

 attend upon him. 



The tide that makes a desolating inroad on one side of a coast, throws up 

 vast masses of sand on the opposite ; the lygeum, or sea-mat-weed, that will 

 grow on no other soil, thrives here and fixes it, and prevents it from being 

 washed back or blown away ; to which the lime-grass,t couch-grass,J sand- 

 reed,^ and various species of willow lend their aid. Thus fresh lands are 

 formed, fresh banks upraised, and the boisterous sea repelled by its own 

 agency. 



Frosts and suns, water and air, equally promote fructification in their re- 

 spective ways ; and the termes, or white ant, the mole, the hampster, and the 

 earth-worm, break up the ground or delve into it, that it may enjoy their salu- 

 brious influences. In like manner, they are equally the ministers of putre- 

 faction and decomposition ; and liverworts and funguses, the ant and the 

 beetle, the dew-worm, the ship-worm, and the wood-pecker, contribute to the 

 general effect, and soon reduce the trunks of the stoutest oaks, if lying waste 

 and unemployed, to their elementary principles, so as to form a productive 

 mould for successive progenies of animal or vegetable existence. Such is 

 the simple but beautiful circle of nature. Every thing lives, flourishes, and 



* On the leafing of trees, there is a curious and valuable paper in the Swedish Amcenitates Academicae 

 vol. iii. art. 46, by H. Barck, 1753, entitled Vt^rnatio Arborum. 

 t Elymus arenarius. % Triticum repens. ^ Axundo arenaria. 



