OF FOREST-TREES. 



133 



organs and members of the whole vegetable body, digested and qualified CHAP. VI r. 



Fifthly, The bark-bound are to be released by drawing your knife 



complete polypus is formed, according to the late discoveries of Trumbull and others.— 

 But do we not as frequently see that a plant produces from the same root several shoots or 

 stems ? For a stem is nothing but a root above ground; for which reason, if we turn a tree, 

 e. g. the Lime-trees, upside down, the stem will become the root, and the root be changed into 

 branches. Besides, what we have said is farther confirmed by the branches, all of which 

 spring from the stem or root ; but the stem or root from whence this branch or shoot was 

 taken, arose from a seed or egg. The same thing may be said of the polypus among 

 animals; and therefore a polypus lives a vegetable life, or a vegetable lives the life 

 of a polypus : and this manner of propagation, though very rare in the animal creation, 

 is extremely common in the vegetable kingdom. No one ought to wonder that new leaves 

 are produced every year from the root or branches ; for in the same manner do we daily- 

 see the feathers of birds produced. A feather, which is the most curious piece of workman- 

 ship, consists of a concave base, filled with a vessel like a lymphatic, so that the nutriment 

 can pass upward but not downward ; next there is a midrib, and the lateral branches 

 both partial and proper, so that a feather may be compared to a fern twice compounded.— 

 Now daily experience informs us that feathers, though adorned with such curious 

 mechanism, fall off eveiy year, and that others, springing from the body of the bird, 

 succeed in their room. Moreover, it is evident that feathers grow only out of the body 

 of the bird, that this body is their root, and that this root owes its origin at first to a seed 

 or egg. The same also holds in plants ; therefore polypi, and plants of every kind, have 

 undoubtedly seeds or eggs, by which they are multiplied, without being cut or propagated 

 by shoots, layers, branches, or suckers. Add to this, that the famous Bern. Jussieu 

 discovered eggs or seeds in the polypi, as may be seen in the Transactions of the Stockholm 

 Society for the year 1746. 



Here we are to observe that all viviparous animals have their eggs, out of which comes 

 their offspring, though these eggs are contained in their pi'oper matrix, and excluded in 

 due time, in the same manner as an egg in the nest cherished by the incubation of the 

 bird, whose uterus is the nest. Nor can we deny, but the smallest vegetables have seeds, 

 although not often discoverable by the naked eye. Valisnerius has discovered the seeds in 

 Duck's-meat, and Michelius has done the same in the Mucor and Byssus ; Bobart 

 in the Ferns ; Linnaeus in the Mosses ; and Reaumur in the Fungi. The ancients 

 thought that Mistletoe was produced without seed, having seen it often grow from the 

 underside of branches ; for how the seeds of Mistletoe could be conveyed from one tree 

 to another, and there adhere to the underside of the branches, was very difficult for them 

 to conceive. But time has discovered, that the Thrush, swallowing the berries on account 

 of the pulp, afterwards voids the seeds entire, which stick with the excrements to the 



drawing your 



Volume 11. 



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