120 — 
depourvus d’air — corame aussi il ne les reduira pas a la fa- 
mine en ne leur donhant pas toute la nourriture dont elles ont 
besoin — ou ne les gorgera pas sans cesse d’aliments d'une di- 
gestion difficile, propres a en faire des gloutons predisposes a 
Papoplexie.” 
“ Because plants neither walk, nor fly, nor crawl, because 
they are not endowed with the sense of pain or pleasure, be- 
cause they neither struggle nor shriek, we are too apt to for- 
get that they are alive, and consequently to treat them as il 
but rods of metal or plates of leather. 
“ Once grant that they are lining beings, that they breathe 
although we see no mouths, that they digest although no 
stomachs are discoverable by common eyes, and above all 
things, that they feel, however low their sensation may be, 
and half the modes of cultivation employed by unskilful gar- 
deners will stand conspicuous as palpable errors. Only show 
that plants are endowed with a life, identical in its nature 
with that of animals, and men must necessarily make it their 
first business to study the history of that life, and to master 
all which interferes with its healthy exercise. Such a step once 
taken, no cultivator would poison plants by a contaminated 
atmosphere, or paralyse them by an eternal footbath of cold 
water, or suffocate them in places where no air can reach them 
or starve them by withholding the food without which they 
cannot exist, or cram them with incessant meals of heavy in- 
digestible matter, which can but reduce them to the condition 
of an apoplectic glutton. ’ 
“ La puissance qui force le bourgeon a se developper, qui 
fait la feuille s'ouvrir, le pollen se mouvoir et transforme la 
semence en ernbrion, cette meme puissance qui fait que la 
plante respire, se nourrit et croit, celle qui distingue tous les 
elres organiques de la matiere brute dont ils sont composes, 
est la merne qui eonstitue chez I’homme les hautes attribu- 
tions de sa nature — e’est la vitalite — mot dont les soit-di- 
sant philosophes peuvent rire, dans leur ignorance et leur pre- 
somption, rnais qui n’en est pas moins en realite, la force 
inconnue qui controle la matiere dans son energie et la con- 
duit it ses fins.” 
<’ That power which causes the bud to sprout, the leaves to 
