94 



ON THE GENERAL ANALOGY OF 



or permanent ; the same variety is to be traced among vegetables. Un- 

 questionably the greater number of animals are of the migratory kind, yet 

 in every order of worms we meet with some instances that naturally apper- 

 tain to the latter, while almost every genus and species of the zoophytic 

 order, its millepores, madrepores, tubipores, gorgonias, isises, corallines, 

 and sponges, can only be included under it. Plants, on the contrary, are 

 for the most part stationary, yet there are many that are fairly entitled to 

 be regarded as locomotive or migratory. The natural order sENTicosiE, 

 the icosANDRiA roLYGYT^iA of the sexual 5?ystem, olfer^ us a variety of in- 

 stances, of which the fragaria or strawberry genus may be selected as a 

 familiar example. The palmate, the testicular, and the premorse rooted 

 tribes afford us similar proofs : many of these grow from a new bulb, or 

 knob, or radicle, while the old root, of whatever description it may be, 

 dies away ; in consequence of which we can only conclude that the vital 

 principle of the plant has quitted an old, dilapidated, and ruinous mansion, 

 to take possession of a new one. Insomuch that were a person, on the 

 point of travelling to the East Indies, to plant the root of an orchis,* or a 

 scabious,! in a particular spot in his garden, and to search for it in the 

 same spot on his return home, he would be in no small degree disappointed ; 

 and if he were to remain abroad long, he must carry his pursuit to half an 

 acre's distance, for thus far would some of these roots perhaps have travel- 

 led in a few years. 



The male valisneria sails from shore to shore over the water in pursuit 

 of his fesnale. And a multitude of sea-plants float through the ocean, and 

 having plenty of food wherever they go, send out no roots in order to 

 search for it. 



Plants, like animals, have a wonderful power of maintaining their pro- 

 per temperature, whatever be the temperature of the atmosphere that sur- 

 rounds them ; and hence occasionally of raising the thermometer, and oc- 

 casionally of depressing it. Like animals, too, they are found to exist in 

 most astonishing degrees of heat and cold, and to accommodate themselves 

 accordingly. Wherever the interest or curiosity of man has led him into 

 climates of the higfiest northern latitudes ; wherever he has been able to 

 exist himself, or to trace a vestige of animal being around him ; there, too, 

 has he beheld plants of an exquisite beauty and perfection ; perfuming, in 

 many instances, the dead and silent atmosphere with their fragrances, and 

 embellishing the barren scenery with their corols. 



It is said that animals of a certain character, the cold-blooded and am- 

 phibious, have a stronger tenacity to life than vegetables of any kind. But 

 the assertion seems to have been hazarded too precipitately ; for, admitting 

 that the common water-newti has been occasionally found imbedded in 

 large masses of ice, perfectly torpid and apparently frozen ; and that the 

 common eei,§ when equally frozen and torpified, is capable of being con- 

 veyed a thousand miles up the country, as from St. Petersburg, for exam- 

 ple, to Moscow, in which country, we are told, it is a common practice 

 thus to convey it ; and that both, on being carefully thawed, may be re- 

 stored to as full a possession of health and activity as ever ; yet the torpitude 

 hereby induced can only be compared to that of deciduous plants in the 

 winter months ; during which season we all know that, if proper care be 



* Orchis morio, or latifolia. 

 i Laceita agMaftca, 



t Scabiosa succisa, ox deyil's bit,' 



