CANTO IV. l. 503.

The glands of vegetables which separate from their blood the mucilage, starch, or sugar for the placentation or support of their seeds, bulbs, and buds; or those which deposit their bitter, acrid, or narcotic juices for their defence from depredations of insects or larger animals; or those which secrete resins or wax for their protection from moisture or frosts, consist of vessels too fine for the injection or absorption of coloured fluids, and have not therefore yet been exhibited to the inspection even of our glasses, and can therefore only be known by their effects, but one of the most curious and important of all vegetable secretions, that of honey, is apparent to our naked eyes, though before the discoveries of Linneus the nectary or honey-gland had not even acquired a name.

The odoriferous essential oils of several flowers seem to have been designed for their defence against the depredations of insects, while their beautiful colours were a necessary consequence of the size of the particles of their blood, or of the tenuity of the exterior membrane of the petal. The use of the prolific dust is now well ascertained, the wax which covers the anthers prevents this dust from receiving moisture, which would make it burst prematurely and thence prevent its application to the stigma, as sometimes happens in moist years and is the cause of deficient fecundation both of our fields and orchards.

The universality of the production of honey in the vegetable world, and the very complicated apparatus which nature has constructed in many flowers, as well as the acrid or deleterious juices she has furnished those flowers with (as in the Aconite) to protect this honey from rain and from the depredations of insects, seem to imply that this fluid is of very great importance in the vegetable economy; and also that it was necessary to expose it to the open air previous to its reabsorption into the vegetable vessels.

In the animal system the lachrymal gland separates its fluid into the open air for the purpose of moistening the eye, of this fluid the part which does not exhale it absorbed by the puncta lachrymalia and carried into the nostrils; but as this is not a nutritive fluid the analogy goes no further than its secretion into the open air and its reabsorption into the system; every other secreted fluid in the animal body is in part absorbed again into the system, even those which are esteemed excrementitious, as the urine and perspirable matter, of which the latter is secreted, like the honey, into the external air. That the honey is a nutritious fluid, perhaps the most so of any vegetable production, appears from its great similarity to sugar, and from its affording sustenance to such numbers of insects, which live upon it solely during summer, and lay it up for their winter provision. These proofs of its nutritive nature evince the necessity of its reabsorption into the vegetable system for some useful purpose.

This purpose however has as yet escaped the researches of philosophical botanists. M. Pontedera believes it designed to lubricate the vegetable uterus, and compares the horn-like nectaries of some flowers to the appendicle of the caecum intestinum of animals. (Antholog. p. 49.) Others have supposed that the honey, when reabsorbed, might serve the purpose of the liquor amnii, or white of the egg, as a nutriment for the young embryon or fecundated seed in its early state of existence. But as the nectary is found equally general in male flowers as in female ones; and as the young embryon or seed grows before the petals and nectary are expanded, and after they fall off; and, thirdly, as the nectary so soon falls off after the fecundation of the pistillum; these seem to be insurmountable objections to both the above-mentioned opinions.

In this state of uncertainty conjectures may be of use so far as they lead to further experiment and investigation. In many tribes of insects, as the silk-worm, and perhaps in all the moths and butterflies, the male and female parents die as soon as the eggs are impregnated and excluded; the eggs remaining to be perfected and hatched at some future time. The same thing happens in regard to the male and female parts of flowers; the anthers and filaments, which constitute the male parts of the flower, and the stigma and style, which constitute the female part of the flower, fall off and die as soon as the seeds are impregnated, and along with these the petals and nectary. Now the moths and butterflies above-mentioned, as soon as they acquire the passion and the apparatus for the reproduction of their species, loose the power of feeding upon leaves as they did before, and become nourished by what?--by honey alone.

Hence we acquire a strong analogy for the use of the nectary or secretion of honey in the vegetable economy, which is, that the male parts of flowers, and the female parts, as soon as they leave their fetus-state, expanding their petals, (which constitute their lungs,) become sensible to the passion, and gain the apparatus for the reproduction of their species, and are fed and nourished with honey like the insects above described; and that hence the nectary begins its office of producing honey, and dies or ceases to produce honey at the same time with the birth and death of the stamens and the pistils; which, whether existing in the same or in different flowers, are separate and distinct animated beings.

Previous to this time the anthers with their filaments, and the stigmas with their styles, are in their fetus-state sustained by their placental vessels, like the unexpanded leaf-bud; with the seeds existing in the vegetable womb yet unimpregnated, and the dust yet unripe in the cells of the anthers. After this period they expand their petals, which have been shewn above to constitute the lungs of the flower; the placental vessels, which before nourished the anthers and the stigmas, coalesce or cease to nourish them; and they now acquire blood more oxygenated by the air, obtain the passion and power of reproduction, are sensible to heat, and cold, and moisture, and to mechanic stimulus, and become in reality insects fed with honey, similar in every respect except their being attached to the tree on which they were produced.

Some experiments I have made this summer by cutting out the nectaries of several flowers of the aconites before the petals were open, or had become much coloured, some of these flowers near the summit of the plants produced no seeds, others lower down produced seeds; but they were not sufficiently guarded from the farina of the flowers in their vicinity; nor have I had opportunity to try if these seeds would vegetate.

I am acquainted with a philosopher, who contemplating this subject thinks it not impossible, that the first insects were the anthers or stigmas of flowers; which had by some means loosed themselves from their parent plant, like the male flowers of Vallisneria; and that many other insects have gradually in long process of time been formed from these; some acquiring wings, others fins, and others claws, from their ceaseless efforts to procure their food, or to secure themselves from injury. He contends, that none of these changes are more incomprehensible than the transformation of tadpoles into frogs, and caterpillars into butterflies.

There are parts of animal bodies, which do not require oxygenated blood for the purpose of their secretions, as the liver; which for the production of bile takes its blood from the mesenteric veins, after it must have lost the whole or a great part of its oxygenation, which it had acquired in its passage through the lungs. In like manner the pericarpium, or womb of the flower, continues to secrete its proper juices for the present nourishment of the newly animated embryon-seed; and the saccharine, acescent, or starchy matter of the fruit or seed- lobes for its future growth; in the same manner as these things went on before fecundation; that is, without any circulation of juices in the petals, or production of honey in the nectary; these having perished and fallen off with the male and female apparatus for impregnation.

It is probable that the depredations of insects on this nutritious fluid must be injurious to the products of vegetation, and would be much more so, but that the plants have either acquired means to defend their honey in part, or have learned to make more than is absolutely necessary for their own economy. In the same manner the honey-dew on trees is very injurious to them; in which disease the nutritive fluid, the vegetable- sap-juice, seems to be exsuded by a retrograde motion of the cutaneous lymphatics, as in the sweating sickness of the last century. To prevent the depredation of insects on honey a wealthy man in Italy is said to have poisoned his neighbour's bees perhaps by mixing arsnic with honey, against which there is a most flowery declamation in Quintilian. No. XIII. As the use of the wax is to preserve the dust of the anthers from moisture, which would prematurely burst them, the bees which collect this for the construction of the combs or cells, must on this account also injure the vegetation of a country where they too much abound.

It is not easy to conjecture why it was necessary that this secretion of honey should be exposed to the open air in the nectary or honey-cup, for which purpose so great an apparatus for its defence from insects and from showers became necessary. This difficulty increases when we recollect that the sugar in the joints of grass, in the sugar-cane, and in the roots of beets, and in ripe fruits is produced without the exposure to the air. On supposition of its serving for nutriment to the anthers and stigmas it may thus acquire greater oxygenation for the purpose of producing greater powers of sensibility, according to a doctrine lately advanced by a French philosopher, who has endeavoured to shew that the oxygene, or base of vital air, is the constituent principle of our power of sensibility.

From this provision of honey for the male and female parts of flowers, and from the provision of sugar, starch, oil, and mucilage, in the fruits, seed-cotyledons, roots, and buds of plants laid up for the nutriment of the expanding fetus, not only a very numerous class of insects, but a great part of the larger animals procure their food; and thus enjoy life and pleasure without producing pain to others, for these seeds or eggs with the nutriment laid up in them are not yet endued with sensitive life.

The secretions from various vegetable glands hardened in the air produce gums, resins, and various kinds of saccharine, saponaceous, and wax-like substances, as the gum of cherry or plumb-trees, gum tragacanth from the astragalus tragacantha, camphor from the laurus camphora, elemi from amyris elemifera, aneme from hymenoea courbaril, turpentine from pistacia terebinthus, balsam of Mecca from the buds of amyris opobalsamum, branches of which are placed in the temples of the East on account of their fragrance, the wood is called xylobalsamum, and the fruit carpobalsamum; aloe from a plant of the same name; myrrh from a plant not yet described; the remarkably elastic resin is brought into Europe principally in the form of flasks, which look like black leather, and are wonderfully elastic, and not penetrable by water, rectified ether dissolves it; its flexibility is encreased by warmth and destroyed by cold; the tree which yields this juice is the jatropha elastica, it grows in Guaiana and the neighbouring tracts of America; its juice is said to resemble wax in becoming soft by heat, but that it acquires no elasticity till that property is communicated to it by a secret art, after which it is poured into moulds and well dried and can no longer be rendered fluid by heat. Mr. de la Borde physician at Cayenne has given this account. Manna is obtained at Naples from the fraxinus ornus, or manna-ash, it partly issues spontaneously, which is preferred, and partly exsudes from wounds made purposely in the month of August, many other plants yield manna more sparingly; sugar is properly made from the saccharum officinale, or sugar-cane, but is found in the roots of beet and many other plants; American wax is obtained from the myrica cerifera, candle-berry myrtle, the berries are boiled in water and a green wax separates, with luke-warm water the wax is yellow: the seed of croton sebiferum are lodged in tallow; there are many other vegetable exsudations used in the various arts of dyeing, varnishing, tanning, lacquering, and which supply the shop of the druggist with medicines and with poisons.

There is another analogy, which would seem to associate plants with animals, and which perhaps belongs to this Note on Glandulation, I mean the similarity of their digestive powers. In the roots of growing vegetables, as in the process of making malt, the farinaceous part of the seed is converted into sugar by the vegetable power of digestion in the same manner as the farinaceous matter of seeds are converted into sweet chyle by the animal digestion. The sap-juice which rises in the vernal months from the roots of trees through the alburnum or sap-wood, owes its sweetness I suppose to a similar digestive power of the absorbent system of the young buds. This exists in many vegetables in great abundance as in vines, sycamore, birch, and most abundantly in the palm-tree, (Isert's Voyage to Guinea,) and seems to be a similar fluid in all plants, as chyle is similar in all animals.

Hence as the digested food of vegetables consists principally of sugar, and from that is produced again their mucilage, starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source of life to all organized beings. And that if our improved chemistry should ever discover the art of making sugar from fossile or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for animals would then become as plentiful as water, and mankind might live upon the earth as thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their numbers but the want of local room.

It would seem that roots fixed in the earth, and leaves innumerable waving in the air were necessary for the decomposition of water, and the conversion of it into saccharine matter, which would have been not only cumberous but totally incompatible with the locomotion of animal bodies. For how could a man or quadruped have carried on his head or back a forest of leaves, or have had long branching lacteal or absorbent vessels terminating in the earth? Animals therefore subsist on vegetables; that is, they take the matter so far prepared, and have organs to prepare it further for the purposes of higher animation, and greater sensibility. In the same manner the apparatus of green leaves and long roots were found inconvenient for the more animated and sensitive parts of vegetable-flowers, I mean the anthers and stigmas, which are therefore separate beings, endued with the passion and power of reproduction, with lungs of their own, and fed with honey, a food ready prepared by the long roots and green leaves of the plant, and presented to their absorbent mouths.

From this outline a philosopher may catch a glimpse of the general economy of nature; and like the mariner cast upon an unknown shore, who rejoiced when he saw the print of a human foot upon the sand, he may cry out with rapture, "A GOD DWELLS HERE."

CONTENTS

OF THE

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

NOTE I ... METEORS.

There are four strata of the atmosphere, and four kinds of meteors. 1. Lightning is electric, exists in visible clouds, its short course, and red light. 2. Shooting stars exist in invisible vapour, without sound, white light, have no luminous trains. 3. Twilight; fire-balls move thirty miles in a second, and are about sixty miles high, have luminous trains, occasioned by an electric spark passing between the aerial and inflammable strata of the atmosphere, and mixing them and setting them on fire in its passage; attracted by volcanic eruptions; one thousand miles through such a medium resists less than the tenth of an inch of glass. 4. Northern lights not attracted to a point but diffused; their colours; passage of electric fire in vacuo dubious; Dr. Franklin's theory of northern lights countenanced in part by the supposition of a superior atmosphere of inflammable air; antiquity of their appearance; described in Maccabees.

NOTE II ... PRIMARY COLOURS.

The rainbow was in part understood before Sir Isaac Newton; the seven colours were discovered by him; Mr. Gallon's experiments on colours; manganese and lead produce colourless glass.

NOTE III ... COLOURED CLOUDS.

The rays refracted by the convexity of the atmosphere; the particles of air and of water are blue; shadow by means of a candle in the day; halo round the moon in a fog; bright spot in the cornea of the eye; light from cat's eyes in the dark, from a horse's eyes in a cavern, coloured by the choroid coat within the eye.

NOTE IV ... COMETS.

Tails of comets from rarified vapour, like northern lights, from electricity; twenty millions of miles long; expected comet.

NOTE V ... SUN'S RAYS.

Dispute about phlogiston; the sun the fountain from whence all phlogiston is derived; its rays not luminous till they arrive at our atmosphere; light owing to their combustion with air, whence an unknown acid; the sun is on fire only on its surface; the dark spots on it are excavations through its luminous crust.

NOTE VI ... CENTRAL FIRES.

Sun's heat much less than that from the fire at the earth's centre; sun's heat penetrates but a few feet in summer; some mines are warm; warm springs owing to subterraneous fire; situations of volcanos on high mountains; original nucleus of the earth; deep vallies of the ocean; distant perception of earthquakes; great attraction of mountains; variation of the compass; countenance the existence of a cavity or fluid lava within the earth.

NOTE VII ... ELEMENTARY HEAT.

Combined and sensible heat; chemical combinations attract heat, solutions reject heat; ice cools boiling water six times as much as cold water cools it; cold produced by evaporation; heat by devaporation; capacities of bodies in respect to heat, 1. Existence of the matter of heat shewn from the mechanical condensation and rarefaction of air, from the steam produced in exhausting a receiver, snow from rarefied air, cold from discharging an air-gun, heat from vibration or friction; 2. Matter of heat analogous to the electric fluid in many circumstances, explains many chemical phenomena.

NOTE VIII ... MEMNON'S LYRE.

Mechanical impulse of light dubious; a glass tube laid horizontally before a fire revolves; pulse-glass suspended on a centre; black leather contracts in the sunshine; Memnon's statue broken by Cambyses.

NOTE IX ... LUMINOUS INSECTS.

Eighteen species of glow-worm, their light owing to their respiration in transparent lungs; Acudia of Surinam gives light enough to read and draw by, use of its light to the insect; luminous sea-insects adhere to the skin of those who bathe in the ports of Languedoc, the light may arise from putrescent slime.

NOTE X ... PHOSPHORUS.

Discovered by Kunkel, Brandt, and Boyle; produced in respiration, and by luminous insects, decayed wood, and calcined shells; bleaching a slow combustion in which the water is decomposed; rancidity of animal fat owing to the decomposition of water on its surface; aerated marine acid does not whiten or bleach the hand.

NOTE XI ... STEAM-ENGINE.

Hero of Alexandria first applied steam to machinery, next a French writer in 1630, the Marquis of Worcester in 1655, Capt. Savery in 1689, Newcomen and Cawley added the piston; the improvements of Watt and Boulton; power of one of their large engines equal to two hundred horses.

NOTE XII ... FROST.

Expansion of water in freezing; injury done by vernal frosts; fish, eggs, seeds, resist congelation; animals do not resist the increase of heat; frosts do not meliorate the ground, nor are in general salubrious; damp air produces cold on the skin by evaporation; snow less pernicious to agriculture than heavy rains for two reasons.

NOTE XIII ... ELECTRICITY.

1. _Points_ preferable to knobs for defence of buildings; why points emit the electric fluid; diffusion of oil on water; mountains are points on the earth's globe; do they produce ascending currents of air? 2. _Fairy-rings_ explained; advantage of paring and burning ground.

NOTE XIV ... BUDS AND BULBS.

A tree is a swarm of individual plants; vegetables are either oviparous or viviparous; are all annual productions like many kinds of insects? Hybernacula, a new bark annually produced over the old one in trees and in some herbaceous plants, whence their roots seem end-bitten; all bulbous roots perish annually; experiment on a tulip-root; both the leaf-bulbs and the flower-bulbs are annually renewed.

NOTE XV ... SOLAR VOLCANOS.

The spots in the sun are cavities, some of them four thousand miles deep and many times as broad; internal parts of the sun are not in a state of combustion; volcanos visible in the sun; all the planets together are less than one six hundred and fiftieth part of the sun; planets were ejected from the sun by volcanos; many reasons shewing the probability of this hypothesis; Mr. Buffon's hypothesis that planets were struck off from the sun by comets; why no new planets are ejected from the sun; some comets and the georgium sidus may be of later date; Sun's matter decreased; Mr. Ludlam's opinion, that it is possible the moon might be projected from the earth.

NOTE XVI ... CALCAREOUS EARTH.

High mountains and deep mines replete with shells; the earth's nucleus covered with limestone; animals convert water into limestone; all the calcareous earth in the world formed in animal and vegetable bodies; solid parts of the earth increase; the water decreases; tops of calcareous mountains dissolved; whence spar, marbles, chalk, stalactites; whence alabaster, fluor, flint, granulated limestone, from solution of their angles, and by attrition; tupha deposited on moss; limestones from shells with animals in them; liver-stone from fresh- water muscles; calcareous earth from land-animals and vegetables, as marl; beds of marble softened by fire; whence Bath-stone contains lime as well as limestone.

NOTE XVII ... MORASSES.

The production of morasses from fallen woods; account by the Earl Cromartie of a new morass; morasses lose their salts by solution in water; then their iron; their vegetable acid is converted into marine, nitrous, and vitriolic acids; whence gypsum, alum, sulphur; into fluor- acid, whence fluor; into siliceous acid, whence flint, the sand of the sea, and other strata of siliceous sand and marl; some morasses ferment like new hay, and, subliming their phlogistic part, form coal-beds above and clay below, which are also produced by elutriation; shell-fish in some morasses, hence shells sometimes found on coals and over iron- stone.

NOTE XVIII ... IRON

Calciform ores; combustion of iron in vital air; steel from deprivation of vital air; welding; hardness; brittleness like Rupert's drops; specific levity; hardness and brittleness compared; steel tempered by its colours; modern production of iron, manganese, calamy; septaria of iron-stone ejected from volcanos; red-hot cannon balls.

NOTE XIX ... FLINT.

1. _Siliceous rocks_ from morasses; their cements. 2. _Siliceous trees_; coloured by iron or manganese; Peak-diamonds; Bristol-stones; flint in form of calcareous spar; has been fluid without much heat; obtained from powdered quartz and fluor-acid by Bergman and by Achard. 3. _Agates and onyxes_ found in sand-rocks; of vegetable origin; have been in complete fusion; their concentric coloured circles not from superinduction but from congelation; experiment of freezing a solution of blue vitriol; iron and manganese repelled in spheres as the nodule of flint cooled; circular stains of marl in salt-mines; some flint nodules resemble knots of wood or roots. 4. _Sand of the sea_; its acid from morasses; its base from shells. 5. _Chert or petrosilex_ stratified in cooling; their colour and their acid from sea-animals; labradore-stone from mother- pearl. 6. _Flints in chalk-beds_; their form, colour, and acid, from the flesh of sea-animals; some are hollow and lined with crystals; contain iron; not produced by injection from without; coralloids converted to flint; French-millstones; flints sometimes found in solid strata. 7. _Angles of sand_ destroyed by attrition and solution in steam; siliceous breccia cemented by solution in red-hot water. 8. _Basaltes and granites_ are antient lavas; basaltes raised by its congelation not by subterraneous fire.

NOTE XX ... CLAY.

Fire and water two great agents; stratification from precipitation; many stratified materials not soluble in water. 1. Stratification of lava from successive accumulation. 2. Stratifications of limestone from the different periods of time in which the shells were deposited. 3. Stratifications of coal, and clay, and sandstone, and iron-ores, not from currents of water, but from the production of morass-beds at different periods of time; morass-beds become ignited; their bitumen and sulphur is sublimed; the clay, lime, and iron remain; whence sand, marle, coal, white clay in valleys, and gravel-beds, and some ochres, and some calcareous depositions owing to alluviation; clay from decomposed granite; from the lava of Vesuvius; from vitreous lavas.

NOTE XXI ... ENAMELS.

Rose-colour and purple from gold; precipitates of gold by alcaline salt preferable to those by tin; aurum fulminans long ground; tender colours from gold or iron not dissolved but suspended in the glass; cobalts; calces of cobalt and copper require a strong fire; Ka-o-lin and Pe-tun-tse the same as our own materials.

NOTE XXII ... PORTLAND VASE.

Its figures do not allude to private history; they represent a part of the Elusinian mysteries; marriage of Cupid and Psyche; procession of torches; the figures in one compartment represent MORTAL LIFE in the act of expiring, and HUMANKIND attending to her with concern; Adam and Eve hyeroglyphic figures; Abel and Cain other hyeroglyphic figures; on the other compartment is represented IMMORTAL LIFE, the Manes or Ghost descending into Elisium is led on by DIVINE LOVE, and received by IMMORTAL LIFE, and conducted to Pluto; Tree of Life and Knowledge are emblematical; the figure at the bottom is of Atis, the first great Hierophant, or teacher of mysteries.

NOTE XXIII ... COAL.

1. A fountain of fossile tar in Shropshire; has been distilled from the coal-beds beneath, and condensed in the cavities of a sand-rock; the coal beneath is deprived of its bitumen in part; bitumen sublimed at Matlock into cavities lined with spar. 2. Coal has been exposed to heat; woody fibres and vegetable seeds in coal at Bovey and Polesworth; upper part of coal-beds more bituminous at Beaudesert; thin stratum of asphaltum near Caulk; upper part of coal-bed worse at Alfreton; upper stratum of no value at Widdrington; alum at West-Hallum; at Bilston. 3. Coal at Coalbrooke-Dale has been immersed in the sea, shewn by sea- shells; marks of violence in the colliery at Mendip and at Ticknal; Lead-ore and spar in coal-beds; gravel over coal near Lichfield; Coal produced from morasses shewn by fern-leaves, and bog-shells, and muscle- shells; by some parts of coal being still woody; from Lock Neagh and Bovey, and the Temple of the devil; fixed alcali; oil.

NOTE XXIV ... GRANITE.

Granite the lowest stratum of the earth yet known; porphory, trap, Moor- stone, Whin-stone, slate, basaltes, all volcanic productions dissolved in red-hot water; volcanos in granite strata; differ from the heat of morasses from fermentation; the nucleus of the earth ejected from the sun? was the sun originally a planet? supposed section of the globe.

NOTE XXV ... EVAPORATION.

I. Solution of water in air; in the matter of heat; pulse-glass. 2. Heat is the principal cause of evaporation; thermometer cooled by evaporation of ether; heat given from steam to the worm-tub; warmth accompanying rain. 3. Steam condensed on the eduction of heat; moisture on cold walls; south-west and north-east winds. 4. Solution of salt and of blue vitriol in the matter of heat. II. Other vapours may precipitate steam and form rain. 1. Cold the principal cause of devaporation; hence the steam dissolved in heat is precipitated, but that dissolved in air remains even in frosts; south-west wind. 2. North-east winds mixing with south-west winds produce rain; because the cold particles of air of the north-east acquire some of the matter of heat from the south-west winds. 3. Devaporation from mechanical expansion of air, as in the receiver of an air-pump; summer-clouds appear and vanish; when the barometers sink without change of wind the weather becomes colder. 4. Solution of water in electric fluid dubious. 5. Barometer sinks from the lessened gravity of the air, and from the rain having less pressure as it falls; a mixture of a solution of water in calorique with an aerial solution of water is lighter than dry air; breath of animals in cold weather why condensed into visible vapour and dissolved again.

NOTE XXVI ... SPRINGS.

Lowest strata of the earth appear on the highest hills; springs from dews sliding between them; mountains are colder than plains; 1. from their being insulated in the air; 2. from their enlarged surface; 3. from the rarety of the air it becomes a better conductor of heat; 4. by the air on mountains being mechanically rarefied as it ascends; 5. gravitation of the matter of heat; 6. the dashing of clouds against hills; of fogs against trees; springs stronger in hot days with cold nights; streams from subterranean caverns; from beneath the snow on the Alps.

NOTE XXVII ... SHELL-FISH.

The armour of the Echinus moveable; holds itself in storms to stones by 1200 or 2000 strings: Nautilus rows and sails; renders its shell buoyant: Pinna and Cancer; Byssus of the antients was the beard of the Pinna; as fine as the silk is spun by the silk-worm; gloves made of it; the beard of muscles produces sickness; Indian weed; tendons of rats tails.

NOTE XXVIII ... STURGEON.

Sturgeon's mouth like a purse; without teeth; tendrils like worms hang before his lips, which entice small fish and sea-insects mistaking them for worms; his skin used for covering carriages; isinglass made from it; cavear from the spawn.

NOTE XXIX ... OIL ON WATER.

Oil and water do not touch; a second drop of oil will not diffuse itself on the preceeding one; hence it stills the waves; divers for pearl carry oil in their mouths; oil on water produces prismatic colours; oiled cork circulates on water; a phial of oil and water made to oscillate.

NOTE XXX ... SHIP-WORM.

The Teredo has calcareous jaws; a new enemy; they perish when they meet together in their ligneous canals; United Provinces alarmed for the piles of the banks of Zeland; were destroyed by a severe winter.

NOTE XXXI ... MAELSTROM.

A whirlpool on the coast of Norway; passes through a subterraneous cavity; less violent when the tide is up; eddies become hollow in the middle; heavy bodies are thrown out by eddies; light ones retained; oil and water whirled in a phial; hurricanes explained.

NOTE XXXII ... GLACIERS.

Snow in contact with the earth is in a state of thaw; ice-houses; rivers from beneath the snow; rime in spring vanishes by its contact with the earth; and snow by its evaporation and contact with the earth; moss vegetates beneath the snow; and Alpine plants perish at Upsal for want of show.

NOTE XXXIII ... WINDS.

Air is perpetually subject to increase and to diminution; Oxygene is perpetually produced from vegetables in the sunshine, and from clouds in the light, and from water; Azote is perpetually produced from animal and vegetable putrefaction, or combustion; from springs of water; volatile alcali; fixed alcali; sea-water; they are both perpetually diminished by their contact with the soil, producing nitre; Oxygene is diminished in the production of all acids; Azote by the growth of animal bodies; charcoal in burning consumes double its weight of pure air; every barrel of red-lead absorbes 2000 cubic feet of vital air; air obtained from variety of substances by Dr. Priestley; Officina aeris in the polar circle, and at the Line. _South-west winds_; their westerly direction from the less velocity of the earth's surface; the contrary in respect to north-east winds; South-west winds consist of regions of air from the south; and north-east winds of regions of air from the north; when the south-west prevails for weeks and the barometer sinks to 28, what becomes of above one fifteenth part of the atmosphere; 1. It is not carried back by superior currents; 2. Not from its loss of moisture; 3. Not carried over the pole; 4. Not owing to atmospheric tides or mountains; 5. It is absorbed at the polar circle; hence south-west winds and rain; south-west sometimes cold. _North-east winds_ consist of air from the north; cold by the evaporation of ice; are dry winds; 1. Not supplied by superior current; 2. The whole atmosphere increased in quantity by air set at liberty from its combinations in the polar circles. _South-east winds_ consist of north winds driven back. _North- west winds_ consist of south-west winds driven back; north-west winds of America bring frost; owing to a vertical spiral eddy of air between the eastern coast and the Apalachian mountains; hence the greater cold of North America. _Trade-winds_; air over the Line always hotter than at the tropics; trade-winds gain their easterly direction from the greater velocity of the earth's surface at the line; not supplied by superior currents; supplied by decomposed water in the sun's great light; 1. Because there are no constant rains in the tract of the trade-winds; 2. Because there is no condensible vapour above three or four miles high at the line. _Monsoons and tornadoes_; some places at the tropic become warmer when the sun is vertical than at the line; hence the air ascends, supplied on one side by the north-east winds, and on the other by the south-west; whence an ascending eddy or tornado, raising water from the sea, or sand from the desert, and incessant rains; air diminished to the northward produces south-west winds; tornadoes from heavier air above sinking through lighter air below, which rises through a perforation; hence trees are thrown down in a narrow line of twenty or forty yards broad, the sea rises like a cone, with great rain and lightning. _Land and sea breezes_; sea less heated than land; tropical islands more heated in the day than the sea, and are cooled more in the night. _Conclusion_; irregular winds from other causes; only two original winds north and south; different sounds of north-east and south-west winds; a Bear or Dragon in the arctic circle that swallows at times and disembogues again above one fifteenth part of the atmosphere; wind- instruments; recapitulation.

NOTE XXXIV ... VEGETABLE PERSPIRATION.

Pure air from Dr. Priestley's vegetable matter, and from vegetable leaves, owing to decomposition of water; the hydrogene retained by the vegetables; plants in the shade are _tanned_ green by the sun's light; animal skins are _tanned_ yellow by the retention of hydrogene; much pure air from dew on a sunny morning; bleaching why sooner performed on cotton than linen; bees wax bleached; metals calcined by decomposition of water; oil bleached in the light becomes yellow again in the dark; nitrous acid coloured by being exposed to the sun; vegetables perspire more than animals, hence in the sun-shine they purify air more by their perspiration than they injure it by their respiration; they grow fastest in their sleep.

NOTE XXXV ... VEGETABLE PLACENTATION.

Buds the viviparous offspring of vegetables; placentation in bulbs and seeds; placentation of buds in the roots, hence the rising of sap in the spring, as in vines, birch, which ceases as soon as the leaves expand; production of the leaf of Horse-chesnut, and of its new bud; oil of vitriol on the bud of Mimosa killed the leaf also; placentation shewn from the sweetness of the sap; no umbilical artery in vegetables.

NOTE XXXVI ... VEGETABLE CIRCULATION.

Buds set in the ground will grow if prevented from bleeding to death by a cement; vegetables require no muscles of locomotion, no stomach or bowels, no general system of veins; they have, 1. Three systems of absorbent vessels; 2. Two pulmonary systems; 3. Arterial systems; 4. Glands; 5. Organs of reproduction; 6. muscles. I. Absorbent system evinced by experiments by coloured absorptions in fig-tree and picris; called air-vessels erroneously; spiral structure of absorbent vessels; retrograde motion of them like the throats of cows. II. Pulmonary arteries in the leaves, and pulmonary veins; no general system of veins shewn by experiment; no heart; the arteries act like the vena portarum of the liver; pulmonary system in the petals of flowers; circulation owing to living irritability; vegetable absorption more powerful than animal, as in vines; not by capillary attraction.

NOTE XXXVII ... VEGETABLE RESPIRATION.

I. Leaves not perspiratory organs, nor excretory ones; lungs of animals. 1. Great surfaces of leaves. 2. Vegetable blood changes colour in the leaves; experiment with spurge; with picris. 3. Upper surface of the leaf only acts as a respiratory organ. 4. Upper surface repels moisture; leaves laid on water. 5. Leaves killed by oil like insects; muscles at the foot-stalks of leaves. 6. Use of light to vegetable leaves; experiments of Priestley, Ingenhouze, and Scheel. 7. Vegetable circulation similar to that of fish. II. Another pulmonary system belongs to flowers; colours of flowers. 1. Vascular structure of the corol. 2. Glands producing honey, wax, &c. perish with the corol. 3. Many flowers have no green leaves attending them, as Colchicum. 4. Corols not for the defence of the stamens. 5. Corol of Helleborus Niger changes to a calyx. 6. Green leaves not necessary to the fruit-bud; green leaves of Colchicum belong to the new bulb not to the flower. 7. Flower-bud after the corol falls is simply an uterus; mature flowers not injured by taking of the green leaves. 8. Inosculation of vegetable vessels.

NOTE XXXVIII ... VEGETABLE IMPREGNATION.

Seeds in broom discovered twenty days before the flower opens; progress of the seed after impregnation; seeds exist before fecundation; analogy between seeds and eggs; progress of the egg within the hen; spawn of frogs and of fish; male Salamander; marine plants project a liquor not a powder; seminal fluid diluted with water, if a stimulus only? Male and female influence necessary in animals, insects, and vegetables, both in production of seeds and buds; does the embryon seed produce the surrounding fruit, like insects in gall-nuts?

NOTE XXXIX ... VEGETABLE GLANDULATION.

Vegetable glands cannot be injected with coloured fluids; essential oil; wax; honey; nectary, its complicate apparatus; exposes the honey to the air like the lacrymal gland; honey is nutritious; the male and female parts of flowers copulate and die like moths and butterflies, and are fed like them with honey; anthers supposed to become insects; depredation of the honey and wax injurious to plants; honey-dew; honey oxygenated by exposure to air; necessary for the production of sensibility; the provision for the embryon plant of honey, sugar, starch, &c. supplies food to numerous classes of animals; various vegetable secretions as gum tragacanth, camphor, elemi, anime, turpentine, balsam of Mecca, aloe, myrrh, elastic resin, manna, sugar, wax, tallow, and many other concrete juices; vegetable digestion; chemical production of sugar would multiply mankind; economy of nature.

THE END