200 
lavater’s 
Some vegetables will weather the liorm, with- 
out falling, till they are ripe, and fit to be gather- 
ed for our refrefliment ; while many a wholefome 
plant is doomed to grow iinfeen, and wafte its 
goodnefs on the craggy cliff; nay, there is an 
infinity of others, pofTeffing the moll: healing qua- 
lities, or formed to lull our fouls to reft, which are 
produaions either of the higheft mountains, or of 
the deep ocean, deferted vales, Jakes, rivers, and 
mineral fprings. 
If we refledf, for an inftant, on their tender frames, 
compared with the folid conftitutions of living crea- 
tures, a ftriking difference between fome of them 
will be difcovered, in a deviation from the general 
order of Nature ; becaufe the ftalks or branches of 
a plant may be feparated, without deftroying its 
whole exiftence ; while the ftream of life has not 
one common centre, but animates alike every part 
of the vegetative fyftem. 
Vegetables pufli their growth by three principal 
ways,— abforption or fucking up, circulation or 
motion of the fluid, and nourifliment ; and by the 
fecondary operations of generation and fecretion ; 
for the a6fs of budding, grafting, tranfpiring, &c. 
may be called mere modes of accompliftiing the 
fame purpofe of vegetating. 
Their outward parts exhibit only a fuller difplay 
of that interior fubftance and compofition, in which 
they would probably be found to differ materially 
from 
