so beautifully displayed, and are enabled to form just ideas of the sublime works of the Great Artificer of the Universe. Is it not contended that a man cannot he a good Physician without he is conversant with Anatomy? And may it not he argued With equal propriety, that no person can he really a Botanist, unless he is acquainted with vegetable physiology? Although some of its doctrines may, in a great measure, be thought abstruse, yet a Lecturer would be highly culpable in passing over them; indeed he would not be discharging that duty which he is expected to perform.
Whenever we investigate any subject relative to Natural Science, we find the greatest regularity and order pervading every class of bodies, whether organized or unorganized, By the former we mean such as have the actions dependent on vitality, such as circulation, respiration, and transpiration, and the power of re-production; by the latter we understand those that are composed of particles, chemically or mechanically combined, and destitute of any vital power.
A question will arise concerning the circumustances on which this vital energy depends; whether it is the result of organization or an independent principle? The best answer to such an interrogation is a candid avowal of our ignorance; but some elucidation may he gathered from the following remarks of Sir James Smith, in his Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany:——“The effects of this vital energy are still more stupendous in the operations constantly going on in every organized body, from our own elaborate frame to the humblest moss or fungus; their different fluids so fine and transparent, separated from each other by membranes as fine as those which compose the eye, all retain their proper situation, though each placed individually is perpetually removed and renewed for sixty, eighty, or an hundred years or more, while life remains; so do the infinitely small vessels of an almost invisible insect, the fine and pellucid tubes of a plant, all hold their destined fluids, conveying or changing them according to fixed laws, but never permitting them to run into confusion; but no sooner does death happen, than, without any alteration of structure, or any apparent change in the material configurations, all is reversed; the eye loses its form and brightness; its membranes let go their contents, which mix in confusion, and thenceforth yield to the laws of Chemistry alone; just so it happens sooner or later to the other parts of the animal as well as the vege-
