table frame; chemical changes, putrefaction and destruction immediately follow the total privation of life, the importance of which becomes instantly evident when it is no more. I humbly conceive, therefore, that if the human understanding can, in any case, flatter itself with obtaining in the natural world a glimpse of the immediate agency of the Deity, it is in the contemplation of this vital principle, which seems independent of natural organization, and an impulse of His own divine energy.”
Now as plants are endowed with life, they are, as a natural consequence, subject to death, though the term of their existence varies greatly, e. g. some only live for one year, and are termed annuals; others two years, and hence named biennials; and some many years, and are called perennials. All vegetables having woody stems, (trees and shrubs), as I need scarcely tell you, come under the latter denomination.
The cedar of Lebanon is known to exist for several centuries, and it is reported that a tree named Adansonia digitata, or monkies' bread or sour-gourd tree, which is well known in the tropical and western coast of Africa, has attained the age of one thousand years, and, when they perish, even their decay furnishes manure for another series, so that nothing is lost by the change, which Dr. Darwin has thus beautifully expressed—
"Hence when a Monarch or a mushroom dies,
Awhile extinct the organic matter lies.
But as a few short hours or years revolve,
Alchemic powers the changing mass dissolve."
The dependence of this same, as well as of most others, on the laws of Chemistry, has been finely expressed by that great chemist Sir Humphry Davy, in the following words:[1]—
“Even Botany and Zoology, as branches of Natural History, though independent of Chemistry as to their primary classifications, yet are related to it so far as they treat of the constitution and functions of vegetables and animals. How dependant, in fact, upon chemical processes, are the nourishment and growth of organized beings, their various alterations of form, their constant production of new substances, and finally their death and decompo
- ↑ An Introductory Discourse delivered in the Theatre of the Royal Institution, 1802, &c. p. 8.
