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SECT. XXL 
ON THE VITALITY OF SEEDS. 
First, if you can, celestial Guide ! disclose 
From what fair fountain varied life arose, 
Whence the tine nerve to move and feel assign’d. 
Contractile fibre, and ethereal mind?— 
« GOD, the First Cause! — in this terrene abode 5 
Young Nature cries, (who is the child of God) 
“ From embryon births the changeful forms improve, 
u Grow, as they live, and strengthen as they move /” 
Darwin, 
f he Deity hath implanted the power of attraction into mineral bodies, and 
given life, or vitality, to the two other Kingdoms of Nature. 
In what life consists is as much a mystery as attraction itself. 
When called into action we at once acknowledge this extraordinary princi¬ 
ple, but when lying dormant, as in the seed, we feel at first loth to ac¬ 
knowledge it. 
To exemplify what is meant by this principle when in a dormant state, 
the illustrious Haller, speaking of Mosses, says, “ that they appear to possess 
the privilege almost of immortality, for after being dried in books, and kept 
in them for two or three hundred years, solely by being macerated in water, 
they are restored to their pristine life and vigour *, which experiments I 
repeated with some of the Mosses in the herbarium of the Bauhines.” 
* I cannot forbear mentioning here some account of a small microscopical animal, which Lew- 
enhoeck has named rotifer (wheel-polypus). All the observers, even the most modern ones, that 
have succeeded him, have believed that this animal has real wheels; but to be certain of the contrary, 
it is only necessary to place it betwixt two pieces of glass, and then observe it with an excellent mi¬ 
croscope. It is a small gelatinous worm, commonly found in the earth or sand, collected by rain 
in the tops of houses. I have likewise found it in other earths, as well as in waters that have been 
some time stagnant, and more frequently again in those that have a very gentle current, and are filled 
