MR. FISH’S REJOINDER TO THE EDITOR, 
343 
former exhibiting large naked roots, and the latter a thick dense mass 
of fibres? If such things prove not a circulation of fluids, they 
prove, at least to my mind, the extreme difficulty of erecting a theory 
applicable to all cases of vegetable development. 
Your answers to several questions respecting your ability to account 
for certain phenomena upon mechanical and chemical principles, clearly 
detect and expose a few inadvertent omissions on my part; but you 
carefully keep your answers from bearing directly upon the matter in 
hand, namely, that if you could not believe the descent of the sap, nor 
yet the assimilation of it to the constituent parts of the system, because 
you could not account for either upon chemical or mechanical principles, 
how do you come to believe in other propositions which you are as 
unable to account for upon these principles ? You may smile at my 
simplicity in referring you to a seed deprived of its vitality; but, simple 
though that fact be, it clearly inculcates that in a living seed, as well 
as in a living plant, there is a great principle existing, to the govern¬ 
ment of which the laws of chemistry and the principles of mechanics 
are wholly subservient. What that principle is, I confess myself igno¬ 
rant of, deeming it wiser to do so, than to pride myself upon the suppo- 
sition that it is to be found in the phenomena of galvano-, electro-, 
chemical agency, or in any other equally high-sounding, unmeaning 
definitions. 
It is true its existence is known by its effects, but not its nature; 
and even these effects are something more than mere “ motion, which 
can neither add to nor abstract from the frame which it expands and 
vivifies.” That the nourishing part of a plant—that which, for the 
purpose of enriching our phytological vocabulary, you designate the 
“ soul,” but a soul possessing neither a particle of vital existence, nor 
yet in the least degree the power of expansion, as these are solely the 
properties of the yet imaginary film named indusium, which, monopo¬ 
lizing all to itself, allows not a particle of vitality to exist either in the 
members, or in the tubes of those members through which the nourish¬ 
ing fluids of the system flow—is what appears to me a little too new¬ 
fangled, and also too mysterious for a tacit acquiescence. It is wonder¬ 
ful to reflect, that the majestic oak, which has braved the fury of some 
thousand storms, was once enclosed in the puny shell of an acorn; but 
more wonderful still to be constrained to believe, that every addition to 
that oak has proceeded from a membrane, every season dividing itself 
into three constituent parts, and yet in the end remaining as imper¬ 
ceptible, and yet as divisible, as ever. Only give me a clear view of 
your indusium , and then, with the knowledge of certain facts which 
could be easily accounted for upon the existence of your theory, I would 
