VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY: ELEMENTARY ORGANS. 
9 
fungus: those different fluids, so fine and transparent, separated 
from each other by membranes as fine, which compose the eye, 
all retain their proper situations (though each fluid is perpetually 
removed and renewed) for sixty, eighty, or one hundred years 
or more while life remains : so do the infinitely small vessels of 
an almost invisible insect, and the fine and pellucid tubes of a 
plant, all hold their destined fluids, conveying or changing them 
according to fixed laws, but never permitting them to run into 
confusion, so long as the vital principle animates their various 
forms : but no sooner does death happen, than, without any 
alteration of structure, or apparent change in their external con¬ 
figuration, all is reversed : the eye loses its form and brightness; 
its membranes let go their contents, which mix in confusion, and 
thenceforth yield to the laws of chemistry alone. Just so it hap¬ 
pens sooner or later to the other parts of the animal as well as 
vegetable frame; chemical changes, putrefaction, and destruction 
immediately follow the total privation of life, the importance of 
which becomes instantly evident when it is no more/’ 
To take a seed as it separates matured from its parent stock, 
in some cases, dry and parched in its appearance, in others co¬ 
vered with a coating almost as hard as the solid rock, or as fre¬ 
quently so minute as to be scarcely discernible, and to know 
that such a fragment contains within it all the elements of life,— 
to take any other body resembling it in appearance and in sub¬ 
stance, yet spun out by the hand of man,— to know that one of 
these when placed in the soil would spring up and grow, and 
produce leaves, flowers, and numerous bodies like itself,—and to 
know, as assuredly, that the other, to all appearance its perfect 
similitude, if placed in a similar situation, would remain per¬ 
fectly inert and unmoved, until decay had destroyed its texture 
and reduced it to dust,—is a source of reflection, a close applica¬ 
tion to which would overwhelm the strongest intellect, and place 
an impenetrable cloud before the brightest vision : the limited 
and feeble comprehension of humanity would be unable to ex¬ 
plain how an atom, such as we have been speaking of, can produce, 
through innumerable ages, a succession of beings transmitting 
each to the other, not only'- material resemblance, but also the 
inexplicable and mysterious property — vitality. 
In the limits to which I am necessarily confined, it would be 
impossible to enter very minutely upon the whole bearing of the 
subject, even had I the ability to do so : all that I can attempt 
