tain actions for a time: this is animal life. It then ceases to show any of these properties; it lies motionless and insensible: it undergoes rapid decomposition, and is resolved into its original elements: this is death. And something analogous to this takes place in plants. The living principle appears, indeed, under a different and less perfect modification; but still it is there. Although vegetable existences have no voluntary motion, they yet possess certain vital functions; they select and secrete their food; they grow; they expand and flourish: this is vegetable life. After a time, these functions cease; they droop, decay, and are decomposed their life is fled.

Both in animals and vegetables the principle of life is endowed, or at least connected, with a power of repairing inju ries to a certain extent, so as to reproduce decayed or destroy ed parts. In both, also, there exists a power of reproducing the species. Nor is the similarity less remarkable in regard to a property, the existence of which, in vegetables, was, till lately, but little known,—I mean the circulation of a fluid through every part of the body. That the blood circulated through the veins of animals, was a fact which could never escape observation, although the principle on which this remarkable function depended, was but lately discovered; but it does not seem to have been suspected, till within these few years, that there was an analogous circulation through vege table substances. That sap existed in plants, indeed, was a familiar fact, and even that it was to be found in greater profusion at one season than at another; but what now appears to be satisfactorily ascertained was not till a recent date even suspected, namely, that there is a regular and periodical circulation of the sap from the root, through the stem of the plant, to the branches, buds, and leaves, and back again through the bark to the root; and that this circulation is as essentially necessary to the life and growth of vegetables, as the circulation of the blood is to the life and growth of animals.

In the manner of propagating the species, too, there are

some curious resemblances between the vegetable and animal creation. Besides that the whole classes of plants, like animals, with few exceptions, are divided into male and female, there is another resemblance, which will scarcely be considered fanciful. All the winged tribes, and most of the inhabitants of the sea, as well as amphibious animals, reproduce the species by means of eggs. In like manner, the whole races of plants, from the moss to the tree, with scarcely any exception, propagate their species by means of seeds, which, in many remarkable particulars, deserve the name of vege

table eggs.

Animals seem to differ essentially from the vegetable kingdom, in the possession of sensibility, a property which the Author of Nature has apparently denied to the latter. This quality forms the first step in the scale, by which the former rises above the latter; but, as it has pleased the Almighty to cause the various grades of existences to run, as it were, into each other, we see here, also, a connecting link of the chain, in the wonderful properties of the sensitive plant, with which most of my readers are probably familiar, which, as it were, simulates sensibility, and approaches so near this vital principle, that authors who delight in those theories which aim at confounding the distinctions that subsist among organized existences, have plausibly maintained the identity of the one with the other.

I have said that plants as well as animals select and secrete their food; but there is a marked difference both in the nature of the food, and in the process by which this nourishment is conveyed and appropriated. The vegetable, adhering to the soil, draws its food from thence, through the medium of roots, by mechanical action, without volition. without feeling, and without locomotion; and that food is inorganic matter. The animal, on the contrary, seeks for its food by a voluntary action, receives it into its system by a mouth, digests it in a stomach, and rejects crudities by an intestinal canal. Its food is organized matter, either animal or vegetable; the Creator having appointed the nourishment

of this superior class to be elaborated from crude and indigestible materials by the organized, indeed, but insentient creation below them. This is one of the wonders of that astonishing gradation of beings with which the world is stored, and cannot but be contemplated with admiration and gratitude. The view which is presented to us, even on the most cursory contemplation of organized matter, as may be perceived from these remarks, is that of a comprehensive whole, united together with the most consummate wisdom, and beautifully harmonizing in all its parts; and this impression will be found to be mightily confirmed and strengthened, when we come to consider the details.

SIXTH WEEK-WEDNESDAY.

II. HYBERNATION OF PLANTS.-ADJUSTMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF PLANTS TO THE ANNUAL CYCLE.

FROM what has been already said, it appears that the chilly nature of the season is not the only cause of the changes in the vegetable kingdom, which begin in autumn, and are consummated in winter. The disappearance of flowers and fruits, the fall of the leaf, and the general sterility which prevails, are evidently the indications of a cycle, belonging to the constitution of this department of nature, which corresponds with the cycle of the year, and affords by its existence, a new proof of wise adaptation. The effects produced by the sudden occurrence of a tract of frosty and tempestuous weather in summer, compared with a similar occurrence in winter, have been elsewhere alluded to, as illustrative of this principle. But a thousand other illustrations might be given. There is something exceedingly interesting and instructive in this view of the subject. The nice adjustment of organic substances to climate, has already been slightly noticed; and, were this inquiry to be followed out in detail, it could not fail to afford conclusive evidence of the same

kind of contrivance with that to which we are now advert ing. Every where we should find the productions of the soil admirably adapted to their localities, as to nourishment and climate; and, in the physical distribution of plants, we should discover new grounds for adoring the perfections of the Creator. The most superficial comparison of the plants of tropical regions with those of the polar circle, would be sufficient for this purpose. In the diminutive impetrum nigrum, with its well-flavoured berries, which forms probably the last link of the descending chain of fruits in our progress to the poles, we observe the same careful adaptation of vegetation to the circumstances of external nature, which forces itself on our view in the majestic and luxuriant productions of the equator.

In the extremes of climate, taken on the average, we have as it were permanent summer on the one hand, and permanent winter on the other; but, in the temperate regions, we have a regular alternation of modified heat and cold, which requires a different constitution of the vegetable creation; and that constitution has been bestowed. We here find the gradual developement of seeds, and shooting forth of buds and leaves, in spring; the vigour and prime of vegetation in summer; its maturity and commencing decay in autumn; its temporary death in winter. Now, what deserves to be peculiarly remarked in this, is the adjusted correspondence of this annual revolution in plants, to the precise circumstances of the character and duration of the seasons.

That the stimulants of heat and cold exercise a considerable influence in promoting or retarding the periodical changes in the vegetable world, there can be no doubt; and this, indeed, is just one of those wise contrivances which indicate design, as, without this modifying power, a slight variation in the temperature of the season, such as frequently takes place in all countries, and especially in a changeable climate like ours, might be productive of fatal effects; but the influence of heat and cold does not extend beyond a certain range, and is undoubtedly controlled, as we have said

by another principle, which we have called the natural constitution of plants. If proof of this were wanting, we should find it in the fact, that fruit trees, for example, when transplanted from our notrhern temperate zone to that of the south, where the seasons are reversed, continue to flourish for several years in the winter months of these regions; and, for the same reason, plants from the Cape of Good Hope, and from Australia, transplanted to our climate, preserve their accustomed period of blooming, notwithstanding the influence of an altered climate. Of this the heaths of those countries, which bloom in the most rigorous season of the year, may be taken as a familiar example.

It appears, then, that the functions of plants have a periodical character, entirely independent of heat and cold. Such stimulants could not produce the effects which actually take place, were not the plants formed by the Author of Nature to run their annual cycle. Now, let it be observed, that a year might, by possibility, be of any length. Instead of extending to twelve months it might be completed in six, and all the seasons might be comprised in that period, or its revolution might be lengthened to double, or fourfold its present period. In either case, the adjustment which now takes place between the seasons and the constitution of plants, would be entirely destroyed, and an utter derangement of the vegetable world would take place. The processes of the rising of the sap,' says Mr. Whewell, 'of the formation of proper juices, the unfolding of leaves, the opening of flowers, the fecundation of the fruit, the ripening of the seed, its proper deposition in order for the reproduction of a new plant, all these operations require a certain portion of time, which could not be compressed into a less space than a year, or at least could not be abbreviated in any very great degree. And, on the other hand, if the winter were greatly longer than it now is, many seeds would not germinate at the return of spring.'

6 Now, such an adjustment,' adds this author, ' must surely be accepted as a proof of design exercised in the formation