roots of the plants in
contact with it; in which this also differs from common chemical
processes.

Hence the particles which are produced from dead organic matter by
chemical decompositions or new consequent combinations, are found
proper for the purposes of the nutrition of living vegetable and
animal bodies, whether these decompositions and new combinations are
performed in the stomach or beneath the soil.

For the purposes of nutrition these digested or decomposed recrements
of dead animal or vegetable matter are absorbed by the lacteals of the
stomachs of animals or of the roots of vegetables, and carried into
the circulation of their blood, and these compose new organic parts to
replace others which are destroyed, or to increase the growth of the
plant or animal.

It is probable, that as in inanimate or chemical combinations, one of
the composing materials must possess a power of attraction, and the
other an aptitude to be attracted; so in organic or animated
compositions there must be particles with appetencies to unite, and
other particles with propensities to be united with them.

Thus in the generation of the buds of trees, it is probable that two
kinds of vegetable matter, as they are separated from the solid
system, and float in the circulation, become arrested by two kinds of
vegetable glands, and are then deposed beneath the cuticle of the
tree, and there join together forming a new vegetable, the caudex of
which extends from the plumula at the summit to the radicles beneath
the soil, and constitutes a single fibre of the bark.

These particles appear to be of two kinds; one of them possessing an
appetency to unite with the other, and the latter a propensity to be
united with the former; and they are probably separated from the
vegetable blood by two kinds of glands, one representing those of the
anthers, and the others those of the stigmas, in the sexual organs of
vegetables; which is spoken of at large in Phytologia, Sect. VII. and
in Zoonomia, Vol. I. Sect. XXXIX. 8. of the third edition, in octavo;
where it is likewise shown, that none of these parts which are
deposited beneath the cuticle of the tree, is in itself a complete
vegetable embryon, but that they form one by their reciprocal
conjunction.

So in the sexual reproduction of animals, certain parts separated from
the living organs, and floating in the blood, are arrested by the
sexual glands of the female, and others by those of the mal