The botanist : being the botanical part of a course of lectures on natural history, delivered in the University at Cambridge : together with a discourse on the principle of vitality / by Benjamin Waterhouse.

  • Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754-1846.
Date:
1811
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The botanist : being the botanical part of a course of lectures on natural history, delivered in the University at Cambridge : together with a discourse on the principle of vitality / by Benjamin Waterhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    Whoever casts his eyes on the surface of the earth, at this season* will see that it is covered and adorn- ed with a beautiful green carpet of vegetables, which carpet is spread anew every year. If after viewing, and admiring its agreeable effect, and after reflecting on its annual renovation, the student of nature should take the pains of examining any individual plant, of which this carpet is composed, he will find that the stem, or trunk of each vegetable is not like a lump of clay, or piece of dough ; but that it has an inter- nal adjustment, arrangement, or disposition of its matter into tubes and vessels, which is called for that reason, organization. If he view the plant through a microscope, he will discover in it different orders of vessels, like those of an animal; and should he submit it to a careful and nice anatomical inves- tigation, he will be convinced th it a plant possesses a vascular system. If he compares it with those things which belong to the other two kingdoms, he will see that a plant occupies a middle space between animals and minerals. On still closer examination he will find that it partakes of the nature of both. If he pluck it up by the roots, he perceives that its ap- pearance is directly changed, for it loses its turges- cency, colour and specific odour : or in other words, it fades, wilts and dies, and is finally decomposed. Hence the inquirer learns that a growing plant is not only a regularly organized body, possessing a vascular system, but is, while attached to the ground by its roots, a living one. That this view of a plant * June,