h
bursting from their self-formed graves, become beautiful winged
inhabitants of the skies, journeying from flower to flower, and
nourished by the ambrosial food of honey.

"There is still another class of animals which are termed vermes by
Linnaeus, which are without feet or brain, and are hermaphrodites, as
worms, leeches, snails, shell-fish, coralline insects, and sponges,
which possess the simplest structure of all animals, and appear totally
different from those already described. The simplicity of their
structure, however, can afford no argument against their having been
produced from a single living filament, as above contended.

"Last of all, the various tribes of vegetables are to be enumerated
amongst the inferior orders of animals. Of these the anthers and stigmas
have already been shown to possess some organs of sense, to be nourished
by honey, and to have the power of generation like insects, and have
thence been announced amongst the animal kingdom in Section XIII.; and
to these must be added the buds and bulbs, which constitute the
viviparous offspring of vegetation. The former I suppose to be beholden
to a single living filament for their seminal or amatorial procreation;
and the latter to the same cause for their lateral or branching
generation, which they possess in common with the polypus, taenia, and
volvox, and the simplicity of which is an argument in favour of the
similarity of its cause.

"Linnaeus supposes, in the introduction to his natural orders, that very
few vegetables were at first created, and that their numbers were
increased by their intermarriages, and adds, 'Suaderet haec Creatoris
leges a simplicibus ad composita.' Many other changes appear to have
arisen in them by their perpetual contest for light and air above
ground, and for food or moisture beneath the soil. As noted in the
'Botanic Garden,' Part II., note on Cuscuta. Other changes of vegetables
from climate or other causes are remarked in the note on Curcuma in the
same work. From these one might be led to imagine that each plant at
first consisted of a single bulb or flower to each root, as the
gentianella and daisy, and that in the contest for air and light, new
buds grew on the old decaying flower-stem, shooting down their elongated
roots to the ground, and that in process of ages tall trees were thus
formed, and an individual bulb became a swarm of vegetables. Other
plants which in this contest for light and air were too