The various secretions of vegetables, as of odour, fruit, gum, resin, wax, honey, seem brought about in the same manner as in the glands of animals; the tasteless moisture of the earth is converted by the hop-plant into a bitter juice; as by the caterpillar in the nut-shell the sweet kernel is converted into a bitter powder.  While the power of absorption in the roots and barks of vegetables is excited into action by the fluids applied to their mouths like the lacteals and lymphatics of animals.

2.  The individuals of the vegetable world may be considered as inferior or less perfect animals; a tree is a congeries of many living buds, and in this respect resembles the branches of coralline, which are a congeries of a multitude of animals.  Each of these buds of a tree has its proper leaves or petals for lungs, produces its viviparous or its oviparous offspring in buds or seeds; has its own roots, which extending down the stem of the tree are interwoven with the roots of the other buds, and form the bark, which is the only living part of the stem, is annually renewed, and is superinduced upon the former bark, which then dies, and with its stagnated juices gradually hardening into wood forms the concentric circles, which we see in blocks of timber.

The following circumstances evince the individuality of the buds of trees.  First, there are many trees, whose whole internal wood is perished, and yet the branches are vegete and healthy.  Secondly, the fibres of the barks of trees are chiefly longitudinal, resembling roots, as is beautifully seen in those prepared barks, that were lately brought from Otaheita.  Thirdly, in horizontal wounds of the bark of trees, the fibres of the upper lip are always elongated downwards like roots, but those of the lower lip do not approach to meet them.  Fourthly, if you wrap wet moss round any joint of a vine, or cover it with moist earth, roots will shoot out from it.  Fifthly, by the inoculation or engrafting of trees many fruits are produced from one stem.  Sixthly, a new tree is produced from a branch plucked from an old one, and set in the ground.  Whence it appears that the buds of deciduous trees are so many annual plants, that the bark is a contexture of the roots of each individual bud; and that the internal wood is of no other use but to support them in the air, and that thus they resemble the animal world in their individuality.

The irritability of plants, like that of animals, appears liable to be increased or decreased by habit; for those trees or shrubs, which are brought from a colder climate to a warmer, put out their leaves and blossoms a fortnight sooner than the indigenous ones.

Professor Kalm, in his Travels in New York, observes that the apple-trees brought from England blossom a fortnight sooner than the native ones.  In our country the shrubs, that are brought a degree or two from the north, are observed to flourish better than those, which come from the south.  The Siberian barley and cabbage are said to grow larger in this climate than the similar more southern vegetables.  And our hoards of roots, as of potatoes and onions, germinate with less heat in spring, after they have been accustomed to the winter’s cold, than in autumn after the summer’s heat.