VEGETABLE STRUCTURE. 
45 
perhaps j while it is all found by this maceration to be one piece, one con- 
tinued I'ubftance. 
Every piece cut from a Plant tranfverfely, therefore, contains all the 
parts of the Plant, ready to grow in length, into a Stalk upwards, and in- 
to a Root downwards ; and to feparate, at a due height from the Root,, 
into the feveral parts of a Flower. This is plain and certain from the 
experiment 3 and this fcts afide all the vague, and indeed abfurd, opini- 
ons of Trees in their Seeds, and the innumerable Germs around their 
'Trunks and Branches. Any tranlverfe piece of a Plant, if it be prelerved 
from rotting, is capable of growth ; and every Seed contains what was 
originally in the globule of Farina, a detached piece of the ITcfh, or ef- 
fential part of the Plant 3 which is equally ready to grow as the other. 
The production of Plants from Cuttings, and from Seed, is therefore the 
fame, only that the one is feparated by violence, and the other by the 
courfe of growth. 
Thus we fee the arrangement of the common particles of matter into 
a Vegetable Body, altho’ it be a work highly perfeCt, and worthy of his 
hand who formed it, yet is not fo complex a thing as it appears; and 
that this arrangement being once made in one individual, the fpecies is 
created for ever : for growth is the confequence of the arrangement, when 
it has heat and moi!lure 3 and there is no generation among Plants. 
This is the general fyflem of Vegetable Bodies 3 and we may from this' 
proceed regularly, to the, detail of their parts. 
' CHAP. iv; 
of tHe Parts of Plants. 
A Perennial of a firm texture, and not too complex compofition, 
wdll be the fitted; fubjeCt for feparating the parts : I have therefore 
chofe the Black Hellebore 3 a Plant which confids only of a Root, 
Radical Leaves, and a Flower Stem 3 and which is fo hard in its fubdance 
as to blow in our colded feafons. 
There is another edential reafon why I have chofen this Plant : to un- 
derdand the parts properly, we mud have them entire 3 and to begin 
from the true foundation, we are to trace them all from the extremitie-s 
of the Fibres of the Root, to the part wherein they terminate. 
In 
