266 ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF VEGETABLE ORGANISATION. 
merce, for which the silver medal was voted to Capt. J. N. Colquhoun, 
R. Art., and a premium is now offered by the society for the best sam¬ 
ple (see List of Premiums to be had gratis at the society’s house in the 
Adelphi) ; letter from Mr. Johnstone on the cultivation and uses of the 
red fig banana, as applicable to commerce ; and a paper on Brazilian 
plat adapted to split straw for hats and bonnets, by Mr. T. B. Smith, 
of St. Albans, for which he received the large silver medal. 
The “ Transactions ” are sold to the public at the society’s house ; 
it is believed that members receive them gratis. They have also the 
privilege of introducing their friends between ten and two, Sundays 
and Wednesdays excepted, to view the models, machines, samples, &c., 
for which premiums have been given. 
In one of the most amusing and respectable provincial periodicals, 
viz. The Analyst, published by Simpkin and Marshall, London, 
there appears in a late number a paper On the progressive Development 
of the Vegetable Organisation, being the substance of a Lecture deli¬ 
vered before the Members of the Worcestershire Natural History 
Society *, in which there is much interesting descriptive matter, well 
worthy the attention of all vegetable physiologists, indeed of every one 
engaged in the culture and management of plants. 
The lecturer commences with the Linnsean axiom, viz. that “ minerals 
grow, vegetables grow and live, and animals groiv, live, and think,” and 
which was intended by its author “ to illustrate the difference existing 
in the objects of the three great divisions of nature,—the animal, the 
vegetable, and the mineral kingdoms,” and may perhaps, for all ordinary 
purposes, serve to distinguish a sufficient distinction; but when we come 
to scrutinise more closely into nature, when we proceed to investigate 
her as displayed in the more simple and elementary of her productions, 
in those productions which we are accustomed to consider as the lowest 
in the scale of being, and often to neglect as scarcely worthy of our 
regard, we shall find ample reason to doubt the correctness of the gene¬ 
ralisation. Many mineral substances, when crushed into fragments, 
afford minute globular particles, which if thrown into water and viewed 
under high magnifying powers are seen to gyrate and revolve in a 
manner highly curious, and at the same time present an appearance 
and habitude, or mode of action, so entirely similar to some forms of 
animal or vegetable being under like circumstances, as to be altogether 
undistinguishable by any of the means of investigation which are at 
present under our command. That there is a difference between the 
* 
By Robert J. N. Streeter), M.D. 
