ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 



87 



•ented in some of the most ordinary appearances of the 

 electric fluid. In the marks caused by positive electricity, 

 6Y which it leaves in its passage, we see the ramifications 

 of a tree as well as of its individual leaves ; those of the 

 negative, recall the bulbous or the spreading root, accord 

 ing as they are clumped or divergent. These phenomena 

 seem to say that the electric energies have had something 

 to do in determining the forms of plants. That they are 

 intimately connected with vegetable life is indubitable, 

 for germination will not proceed in water charged with 

 negative electricity, while water charged positively greatly 

 favors it ; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, 

 when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate 

 in branches over its beds. With regard to the resem- 

 blance of the ramifications of the branches and leaves of 

 plants to the traces of the positive electricity, and that of 

 the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance calling for 

 especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its 

 lower strata, is generally charged positively, while the 

 earth is always charged negatively. The correspondence 

 here is curious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed 

 on the basis of a natural electrical operation — the brush 

 realized. We can thus suppose the various forms of 

 plants as, immediately, the result of a law in electricity 

 variously affecting them according to their organic cha- 

 racter, or respective germinal constituents, In the pop- 

 lar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent ; 

 the reverse in the beech ; in the palm, a pencil has pro- 

 ceeded straight up for a certain distance, radiates there, 

 and turns outwards and downwards ; and so on. We can 

 here see at least traces of secondary means by which the 

 Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms 

 with which the earth is overspread. 



Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of 

 the same four simple substances or elements — carbon, 

 oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. The first combinations 

 of these in animals are into what are called proximate 

 principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &c, out of 

 which the structure of the animal body is composed, 

 larly beautiful, taking place principally in that branch of the sy- 

 phon towards the north. If the syphon be placed in a plane per- 

 pendicular to the magnetic meridian., and a strong magnet brought 

 near it, the precipitation will commence in a short time, and be 

 most copious in the branch of the syphon nearest to tne south pole 

 *f the magnet." 



