resemble lungs, and those of aquatic plants the gills of fish; that there are other systems of vessels resembling the vena portarum of quadrupeds, or the aorta of fish; that the digestive power of vegetables is similar to that of animals converting the fluids, which they absorb, into sugar; that their seeds resemble the eggs of animals, and their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring.  And, lastly, that the anthers and stigmas are real animals, attached indeed to their parent tree like polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous motion; that they are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with powers of reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths and butterflies, which plunder their nectaries.  See Botanic Garden, Part I. add. note XXXIX.

The male flowers of vallisneria approach still nearer to apparent animality, as they detach themselves from the parent plant, and float on the surface of the water to the female ones.  Botanic Garden, Part II.  Art.  Vallisneria.  Other flowers of the classes of monecia and diecia, and polygamia, discharge the fecundating farina, which floating in the air is carried to the stigma of the female flowers, and that at considerable distances.  Can this be effected by any specific attraction? or, like the diffusion of the odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents of winds, and the accidental miscarriages of it counteracted by the quantity of its production?

2.  This leads us to a curious enquiry, whether vegetables have ideas of external things?  As all our ideas are originally received by our senses, the question may be changed to, whether vegetables possess any organs of sense?  Certain it is, that they possess a sense of heat and cold, another of moisture and dryness, and another of light and darkness; for they close their petals occasionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or darkness.  And it has been already shewn, that these actions cannot be performed simply from irritation, because cold and darkness are negative quantities, and on that account sensation or volition are implied, and in consequence a sensorium or union of their nerves.  So when we go into the light, we contract the iris; not from any stimulus of the light on the fine muscles of the iris, but from its motions being associated with the sensation of too much light on the retina:  which could not take place without a sensorium or center of union of the nerves of the iris with those of vision.  See Botanic Garden, Part I. Canto 3. l. 440. note.

Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionaea, and of drosera, and the stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a sense of touch, as well as a common sensorium; by the medium of which their muscles are excited into action.  Lastly, in many flowers the