. 8. The difference of position between plants and animals.

Now there is this difference between the positions held in creation by
animals and plants, and thence in the dispositions with which we regard
them; that the animals, being for the most part locomotive, are capable
both of living where they choose, and of obtaining what food they want,
and of fulfilling all the conditions necessary to their health and
perfection. For which reason they are answerable for such health and
perfection, and we should be displeased and hurt if we did not find it
in one individual as well as another.

Sec. 9. Admits of variety in the ideal of the former.

But the case is evidently different with plants. They are intended
fixedly to occupy many places comparatively unfit for them, and to fill
up all the spaces where greenness, and coolness, and ornament, and
oxygen are wanted, and that with very little reference to their comfort
or convenience. Now it would be hard upon the plant if, after being tied
to a particular spot, where it is indeed much wanted, and is a great
blessing, but where it has enough to do to live, whence it cannot move
to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms
here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks,
and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the
plant, I say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable
for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant
of the kind. And so we find it ordained that in order that no unkind
comparisons may be drawn between one and another, there are not
appointed to plants the fixed number, position, and proportion of
members which are ordained in animals, (and any variation from which in
these is unpardonable,) but a continually varying number and position,
even among the more freely growing examples, admitting therefore all
kinds of license to those which have enemies to contend with, and that
without in any way detracting from their dignity and perfection.

So then there is in trees no perfect form which can be fixed upon or
reasoned out as ideal; but that is always an ideal oak which, however
poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, or tempest-tortured, is yet seen to
have done, under its appointed circumstances, all that could be expected
of oak.

The ideal, therefore, of the park oak is that to which I alluded in the
conclusion of the former part of this work,