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Show 31i VEGE'fABLES monuments which are in progress in our owR country; aml as these must have an effect upon ev~ry operation o~ art which is in.any way connected w~th plants or ammals, or to wh1eh the state <-! the atmosphere has any relation, we must ?e, m so far, at the mercy of guesses in the condu.ctmg o! the!e. That has passed, and we cannot help 1t; but~~ ouoht to be a warnino- to us and induce us to examme ~he connexion and~atch 'the succession of every tlnng we see. b b. t The vegetable tribes are perhaps the est su ~ec s of observation for those who m~ke a~ amusement rather than a business of observmg. fhe weather is a wayward thina-, and we want many of the .elements which would be necessary t.o form the. little that we do know about it into a scwnce. Ammal.s, too, in their wild or natural state, the <?nly state m which they are of much value to a gen.mne observer of nature, are, except in very few spec1e~, see~1 only by snatches; and very much of what IS sa1d and written ahout them is inference, and .not fact. In many cases, too, it is very imperfect mferenc.e, for it is contradicted by the fact, whenever. that IS observed. The error consists in attemptmg t~ found a fact upon an inferen~e, instead of drawmg an inference from a fact, which is about as abs~rd as if we were to attempt to melt snow by cold, or freeze water by heat. . But in the case of vegetables, we c.an, m the ~Iajority of instances, observe the ~ntlre successiOn from embryo to embryo, not only m the course of a lifetime, but in the course of. o~e .year; and where we cannot do that with the u~d1v1dual~ we can do what conduces even more to our mformatwn. h1 most species of plants the successions follow. each ot~er so closely that, unless in some o! the ammals whtch appear only for very short perwd.s of the season, we can have all the stages of growth before us at once, from the first germinations of the seed to tho A POPULAR STUDY. 315 final decay of the old plant. In a thousand plants of the same species we can thus observe a thousand points in the hi story of the same plant; and thus we have, before our eyes, as clear and satisfactory information as if we could work the seed up to the plant, or change the plant back to the seed by direct experiment, in the same way that we can dissolve or form a chymical compound. It is true that we cannot, in the case of the vegetable, keep the substances out of which it is immediately compounded in boxes and bottles, or pour the water directly out of a pitcher, or apply the fire directly by a furnace. in the same manner as we can do in the chymical experiment; but still w~ can "watch the progress" as closely in the one case as in the other; and we have no more knowledge of the ultimate principles of chymical union than we have of vegetable assimilation. From what we do observe, however, we can accelerate, retard, and otherwise modify the action of vegetables over a very considerable range. It is upon our power of doing this that all cultivation, whether of the fields, the garden, or the forest, is founded; and that cultivation may be said to be the ground work of all that we do and all that we can possess. Our food is either directly vegetable or obtained by means of vegetables. The corn, the pulse. the roots, the buds, the leaves, and the fruits, which, in their immediate substance, prepared or unprepared by art, human beings use for food, are very numerous ; so much so that the list of those which are familiarly known in the British markets would fill a considerable volume ; and when those that are used in other countries are added, the number is almost incredible. When a number of species, having those appear ances, which lead botanists to consider them as "allied," and form them into what they call a "natural order"-(there are no orders or classes in nature, AA |