Chapter XVII: Part III: Biology--Of the Whole in Singulars (4)

1389. There can be no doubt that the root also abstracts carbon from these elements, and converts it into mucus, or probably separates it from carbonic acid. The mucus approximates the animal nature, so that the root in its constituent parts, in its smell, and even in its structure, exhibits animal properties; animal substances therefore are also the best nutritive media of plants.

1390. That which putrefies most easily is the best manure.

1391. Through the process of putrefaction many kinds of antagonisms and attractions, by which the absorption takes place through the root-filaments, are aroused.

1392. The root has not merely one orifice for absorbing, but it imbibes upon the whole surface, from its being still immersed in the chemical menstruum. The integument of animals does the same.

b. BARK-PROCESS--EVAPORATION.

1393. The bark, as an organ of cellular tissue, which is placed wholly in the outward direction, must principally exercise the process of absorption and evaporation. Now, as there are two kinds of bark, a root-and a stalk-bark, or a water-and air-bark, so upon the former will the business of absorption chiefly devolve, on the latter that of evaporation.

1394. As the bark of the stalk possesses stomata, which are wanting in that of the root, so is this a probable reason for these apertures being organs of evaporation. This opinion is corroborated also by aquatic leaves being without stomata, while they occur in the leaves exposed to air.

1395. Meanwhile the stalk is of a twofold character; it is only the root that has ascended into the air. As an aerial root it absorbs. Without doubt the stalk absorbs the same as the root, namely, moisture from the air and carbonic acid. Experiments prove it.

c. CELL-PROCESS--DIGESTION.

1396. The cells are the crystallized drops of mucus, the fundamental mass of the vegetable and consequently the water, which converts itself into the Earthy, or wherein the Solid has been elaborated and precipitated. They construct the Solid that has been absorbed into new cells. But the Solid can only assume other forms by means of water. The solution, however, with mixture of bodies and formation into globules is digestion. The cells are thus the stomachs of which the plant has millions like mouths.

1397. The bodies absorbed must move in the cells; for chemical solution and mixture, being itself nothing else than separation and union of atoms, is consequently motion. In a single cell the motion must be upon all sides, because the atoms are attracted and repelled from all points of the cell-wall. In cells, however, which are united with others and therefore subjected to longitudinal polarity, this motion must be performed in accordance with the axis of the cells.

1398. This motion proceeds to and fro, because the extremities of the cells have different polarities, and therefore repel the same atoms, which they have before attracted. In the cells the mucus appears to be converted into starch-granules.

B. _Vascular Processes._

a. _Vessel-process--Conveyance of Sap._

1399. The vessels or intercellular passages conduct the sap, or the water of the plant. Their function is therefore the continued conveyance of the sap that has been absorbed from the root, and rendered solid or consistent by the evaporation going on in the bark and elaborated by the cells.

1400. The vessels of plants are notwithstanding to be compared with the lymphatic vessels of animals, in so far also as these are distributed throughout the whole body, and convey the sap simply in one direction not in a circle.

1401. As the passages between all the cells are in all directions, so the vegetable saps or fluids flow in all directions, and not to one centre as in the animal. Plants have no heart. The sap pursues a tolerably rapid course in the vessels. A fading or drooping cabbage, two feet in length, can gradually become erect in a few minutes after being put to soak in water. In other respects the course of the sap in the vessels may be seen in many plants under the microscope.

b. _Liber-process--Mixture of Sap._

1402. In the liber, as being the mass of intercellular passages, the sap contained in the vessels principally accumulates, as in the thoracic duct of animals; in it the matters have not been simply conveyed and dissolved, but also mixed and converted into true vegetable sap, into blood.

1403. The tubes of the liber are those by which the chemical life is sustained.

c. _Stalk-process--Secretion._

1404. The stalk is the root planted in air, and consequently its process is the differenced process of putrefaction, in which the mucus becomes further evolved.

1405. The analysis chiefly occurs in the stalk; the mucus, or rather the starch, becoming converted into sugar and acids.

1406. Sugar is the mucus of the stalk, and is found in every vegetable sap, especially that of such plants as are characterized by the systems of the stalk, and have not yet attained the formation of the reticular leaf, as the Monocotyledones, e. g. the grasses.

1407. The sugar originates from a process of fermentation; the process of the stalk must consequently be regarded as a vital _process of fermentation_.

1408. The process of fermentation is that of putrefaction carried on in the air, or the polar process of fermentation. Both processes consequently observe a polar relation towards each other.

1409. The sugar-process passes over finally into acidification.

1410. The _Inflammables_, as the ætherial oils, balsams, and resins, are formed in the antagonism of the sugar or of the _acids_. Here also belong most of the peculiar vegetable matters, as the milky saps, colouring matters, medicinally active bodies, poisons, and the alkaloids.

C. _Tracheal-processes._

a. _Leaf-process--Inspiration._

1411. In the foliage the woody rings have issued freely into the air, in order that they may offer their whole surface to its influence, and thus become electrified and oxydized.

1412. The leaf is the free, external organ of respiration to the plant; it is its _lung_. Through the leaf the air, and chiefly its oxygen, is transferred into the plant, just as it is through the lungs into the animal.

1413. The leaves take in oxygen gas; this is their _essential_ function, and not that of exhaling it.

1414. The leaves _only_ exhale oxygen gas when exposed to light. The development of oxygen in the plant is accordingly a light-and not an air-process. In consequence of this the leaves give out oxygen gas only during the day, but during the night and even upon gloomy days, where not the light but only the air is active, they take in oxygen and give out carbonic acid.

1415. The light develops the oxygen gas out of the plant in a perfectly inorganic manner, like as from every water, that can be set in a process of tension. _Rumford_ has developed by simple glass tubes oxygen gas out of water. The oxygen gas of plants is therefore a result only of the decomposition of water in an inorganic manner by the agency of light, or virtually the separation only of the oxygen that is clinging to the water.

1416. Through the process of respiration in the plant carbonic acid has been formed and excreted. For the mucus becomes oxydized, and thereby the process also of fermentation, the product of which is carbonic acid, is promoted.

1417. The respiratory process of the leaves is the perfected process of fermentation in the stalk, in which finally, namely, in the fruit-saps, the separation of both the products of fermentation, the vinous and acetic, is prepared.

1418. Just as acids and sugar originate in the stalk, so in the foliage does their electrical antagonism, or the ætherial oils and perfumes. Sweet scents or perfumes are properties of the air, and therefore originate also with the aerial process. This is retrospectively a proof that the leaf-process is the respiratory process.

1419. Through the leaves, with which the whole surface of the earth is covered, the planet respires, and thereby the surface of the earth principally obtains its electricity.

1420. Vegetation must therefore effect an important change in the earth's electricity. The earth must be differently polarized after, to what it was before, the fall of the leaf.

1421. Thereby the northern hemisphere is differently polarized to the southern, because the latter has less soil than the former.

b. _Wood-process--Nutrition._

1422. As most of the spiral vessels are collected together in the body of wood, and finally in the leaves issue forth quite free and naked into the air, so must the wood conduct for the most part air into the plant. The polarization of the other systems, of the liber and the bark, must therefore proceed from the body of wood.

1423. The greatest amount of induration must originate in the body of the spiral vessel, because in it the process of oxydation takes place in the most active manner. From the same cause the process of nutrition must also be supported by it in the most powerful manner. The wood is the chief seat of nutrition.

c. _Tracheal-process--Oxydation._

1424. The structure of the spiral vessels, their resemblance to the tracheæ or air-tubes of insects, their distribution throughout the whole trunk, the air they contain which is found decidedly free in the plant, leave no doubt that the tracheæ are air-conveying organs, and consequently have, like the arteries in animals, the process of respiration directly intrusted to them.

1425. Now through the process of respiration the general polarity, and consequently the cause or fundamental principle of all life, enters the plant.

1426. The tracheæ penetrate or traverse the whole plant from the apex of the root to that of the flower. Their operation must therefore also extend through the whole plant.

1427. The tracheal system must also govern the plant by polarity, and thus in an immaterial manner.

1428. This polarity acts simply in the direction of the plant's longitude, not transversely, like the material fundamental processes.

1429. The tracheæ impart in a spiritual manner the antagonism between the root and fabric of the stem.

1430. As the tracheæ are, or constitute, the highest system of the plant, so must it be them upon which the light principally acts. The material processes of plants are kept in activity by the antagonism of light.

1431. By this only are the instantaneous changes, which follow upon the influence of light or section of the spiral vessels, to be explained. Upon this, therefore, depends the instantaneous elevation of the processes under the influence of a ray of light, and their depression, if only a cloud pass in front of and obscure the sun; hence too does the plant die, so to speak, upon the very spot, if the spiral fibres within the liber be cut through, but the latter left uninjured.

1432. The liber no longer conveys any sap to the divided tracheæ, solely because it has lost the condition to be affected by the light-polarity. On the contrary, a plant does not die so soon, if the liber be cut through, but the spiral vessels preserved. The spiral fibres conditionate consequently the motion and the excitation of the organic processes.

1433. _The spiral fibres are therefore, apart even from their function of respiration, or rather because this is the highest vegetable function, that for the plant, which the nerves are for the animal._

1434. The tracheæ of plants do not ramify like the nerves of animals; but if they divide, they separate only as fascicles, which have been liberated from their origin. The tracheæ commence too directly in the mass of cells, wherever that may happen to be, and thus become what governs an organ, exactly like the animal nerves. Their analogy is greatest with the sympathetic nerves. The tracheæ, just as in the animal kingdom, are the mediators, not the founders, of vegetable life.

1435. The principle of motion must reside in the tracheæ, provided that higher, and not merely chemical movements, occur in the plant.

1436. These movements must and can only exist in those organs which consist almost entirely of spiral vessels, and thus only in the highest organs.

1437. Such are the leaves and the corollæ. Is it wished to compare the corolla, apart from its sexual relation, with an organ in animals, it can only be contrasted with the highest nervous organ. The corolla is the brain of plants, that which corresponds to light, but which here remains stationary upon the sexual stage. It may be said that what is sex in the plant, becomes brain in the animal, or the brain is only the animal sex.

1438. The most general function of the brain is, however, feeling or touch combined with motion. If the corolla could attain to a sensorial function, it would be to that of touch.

1439. It is conducted thereto; but at the instant, when it is indulged in feeling the mental capacity of the animal, it sinks down exhausted and dies. It is punished for the risk that has been run in wishing to attain unto self-cognition.

1440. Motion and touch are revealed only in the highest organs of the plant, or in the stamina. The filament moves upon the pistil and touches it with the pollen, which at that instant, however, is scattered in small particles, and leaves behind the filament in a withered state.

1441. The motion performed by the filaments appears to be a simple operation of the irritability in the tracheæ that have become soft, without undergoing chemical decomposition, but probably by sudden influx of sap, induced by the tension of air in the spiral vessels.

1442. In the highest, or the pinnate, leaves, movements, which are probably a result of the tracheal irritability, also occur, but are devoid the object of coming into contact with, or of touching, anything. The sensitive plants, as Hedysarum gyrans, move their leaves, not from any intrinsic determination upon their part, but in accordance with an antecedent stimulus, and thus not voluntarily, but probably through the influence merely of polar tension. The movements of leaves are convulsions of plants, although too an afflux of sap be caused or induced by the stimulus.

SAP-MOTION.

_Galvanic Process._

1443. _The motion of the sap is imparted through the antagonism of the respiratory and digestive processes._ For these two processes are the combination of the Chemical with the Electric, which is the galvanism.

1444. The galvanic poles attract and repel the fluidity; thus the vegetable sap is attracted by the root and by the stalk. But the differencing or the oxygen pole is the stronger of the two. The determining principle of the movement of the sap resides consequently in the stalk, and the chief direction of the sap-motion tends upwards.

1445. At times, when the air-polarity is elevated, the sap also ascends more rapidly. As in summer, upon clear warm days. It ascends slowly upon gloomy and chill days. That in this also light and heat are playing their parts, is self-intelligible. Thereby the upper particles of sap become lighter and ascend, being pressed upwards by the lower and colder particles. As they are nevertheless by no means changed, this is a proof that, during the time so employed, polar forces also act upon them.

1446. But the root has also the endeavour to attract the sap; but as its pole is feebler in character, the stalk draws the sap from the ultimate extremities of the root into itself. If accordingly the polarity of the air becomes weaker, while the plant is losing its leaves or the organs of polarization; so is it easy to imagine why the motion of the sap becomes slower. As, however, the aerial polarity is always stronger than that of the earth, the sap must thus in winter also take the same, or upward, direction.

1447. A fall or descent of the sap can therefore never take place abstractedly forsooth from the root, in which it sinks by its own gravity. How a part of a plant, e. g. a twig, could continue alive, were the sap to have fallen or receded from it, is not to be conceived. It does not follow from what has been just stated, that movements of sap should not take place in all directions, and consequently too downwards; they must indeed occur rather than otherwise, and that indeed upon all sides; only the principal track or course of the sap must always pass in the direction upwards.

1448. The movement of the sap consists simply in an ascent and impulsion of its particles upon all sides, but without any _circulation_. A circulation would only be possible if the plant were an organism disengaged from the elements; but as the earth and air belong to its organization; it thus necessarily oscillates between both, and its movements also can only be oscillations of a similar intervening character.

1449. There are consequently no arteries and veins, and still less a heart in plants, as some have striven to make out.

1450. The vessels of plants are most properly to be compared with the lymphatic vessels of animals, the fluid or sap of which also tends from all parts towards one summit, namely, the lungs, while still at times retrogressive movements also seem to occur.

1451. The vegetable sap does not move in a straight line upwards, but in all directions, to the right and left, in a zigzag manner, and so on. This is proved by two incisions being made in a branch opposite to each other. The motion of the sap in the plant is more an impulsion of the sap toward all sides, with a predominance in the direction upwards, than a rapid current as in the blood. If we reflect that the motion of the sap when seen under the microscope and then magnified several hundred times, still only resembles a gentle rippling of small drops, it thus becomes clear that the true current or flow occurs only in a very tardy manner. Wherever therefore in the plant the process of differencialization may be brought into play, there the sap is impelled.

1452. Through the polarization of the sap the cells also become polar towards each other, and then even the cell-walls, whereby the cellular sap with its mucous granules is kept in constant motion. The theory of the motion of sap has not consequently been based upon the theory of capillary tubules; nor is heat alone the cause of its ascent; nor the empty space, which originates superiorly by evaporation; nor electricity in an inorganic sense.

II. FUNCTIONS OF THE FLORAL-ORGANS.

1453. These functions correspond to those of the light, heat, and gravity in the corolla, pistil and seed. The corolla irradiates, the pistil gives out heat, the seed sinks like the earth towards the centre.

1. _Function of the Corolla._

FERTILIZATION.

1454. As in the vegetable trunk the principle function has been the antagonism between the aerial and the terrestriaqueous plant, so must the same function be repeated in the corresponding organs of the blossom. It oscillates in the principal antagonism between the corolla and pistil, which is the antagonism of leaf and stem, that of electrism and chemism, of light and body, of spirit and matter.

1455. The pollen electrifies, animates, or inspirits the ovarium, by which means it becomes stimulated to the development of seeds. Without this animating influence the seed had not been developed.

1456. This relation, whereby through the balance of an antagonism, a whole organism has been evoked into life, is called the _sexual relation_.

1457. The sex is consequently the antagonism between spirit and matter, light and mass, æther and the terrestrial elements, sun and planet, between electrism and chemism, that has been represented in an organism as totality. In sex consequently the primary antagonism of the world, or that of spirit and matter, centre and periphery, has been organically represented.

1458. The sex has hence from the beginning been established and prophesied; manifests itself also under diverse forms in the Organic, but becomes first individualized in an organic body. This is the lofty sense or signification of the sexual relation, that in it the Spiritual and Material pair together, and thereby sprout forth or germinate into a whole world. In sex the mystery of creation lies concealed.

1459. What is producing the fruit is called the _female_, that which awakes production, the _male_.

1460. Mascularity is the spirit of the world, feminality the matter which becomes animated by the former; mascularity is the light of the word, which illuminates the feminality, and it is pregnant; mascularity is the electricity of the world, which arouses the female chemism unto galvanic circulation. By the male the female becomes animated; before this it is dead and devoid the differentialization, which is necessary to every action.

1461. Impregnation is a simple act of light upon the matter, an _irradiation_, as it was termed, with such an exalted appreciation of its significance, by the ancients. The male imparts nothing in impregnation but the _solar ray_, or _fluid nervous mass, in its semen_, which awakes, animates, and inspirits the quiescent female. The female supplies or furnishes all the Material or, as in the plant, the fruit. In other respects it is not to be understood, as if no material whatever had been imparted by the male, but only that it is not the matter as such, which the male gives the female, that becomes fruit; but that the tension which resides in male semen, evokes at the same time, as by a process of contagion or fermentation, a similar tension in the female.

1462. The process of tension resides originally in the male, because he is related or akin to the light; but the female first obtains the light through the male.

1463. Impregnation is an excitation by the electrical, of the slumbering chemical, process. The pregnancy is consequently an uninterrupted chemical process.

1464. The female is the first and lies deeper in the developmental history of the planet (but not in the creation), just as the digestive process is prior or antecedent to the respiratory.

1465. In the truest sense is feminality co-ordinated with the digestive, the mascularity with the respiratory, system. The female is (organically considered) abdomen, the male, thorax. Pregnancy is a sexual process of digestion, impregnation a sexual process of respiration. In impregnation the female respires the male, whereby it receives into itself a thoracic function, becomes itself male, i. e. is then capable of producing something out of itself. Now, the female produces a fruit, which is synonymous with both principles.

1466. The semen is the fruit of the male. The male is always pregnant, and that indeed by virtue of his own power. This power is deficient in the female, which does not possess the light in itself, but only the elemental bodies that are ready and susceptible of form.

1467. The anthers are the male organs, the pollen is the semen. The pistils are the female organs, the seed-granules are properly speaking, the _germ_.

1468. The pollen is a most highly differenced, electrical product; the seed-granule a wholly indifferent, and tranquil mucous mass. The pollen falls upon the stigma of the pistil, and irradiation has taken place; the material fruit-capsule gains thereby so much polarity, that saps enough ascend, in order to develop the germless seed-vesicles.

1469. It is quite unnecessary for the pollen, with its sap or gas, to be materially conveyed through the style to the seed. It is only requisite for the style to be excited, dualized, electrified, and then it has life enough of its own. But it does not follow, because it is unnecessary for the sap of the floral dust or pollen to reach the seed-granules, that it cannot or ought not to reach thereunto. In many plants the pollen-tube does actually reach there and penetrate through the micropyle. In many styles it is still held as impossible, for the pollen-tube to penetrate through them to the seeds. The pollen-sap indeed simply evokes on the apex of the seed (upon the summit of the lorical rib, through whose liberation the micropyle originates) the vital process, which, without this stimulus, would perish. Thereby a new cell is secreted, from whence the germ is developed.

IRRITABILITY--MOTION.

1470. In impregnation the heaven is married to the earth; for then the spirit descends, and does not esteem itself too highly to become flesh. Impregnation is the highest immaterial action of the plant.

1471. If, therefore, the irritability of the plant at any time, or but once only, makes its appearance independently, it must be in the sexual organs, and in the moments of impregnation. Impregnation ensues, when the two mundane principles of the plant, light and matter, have attained, as corolla and fruit, to the highest pitch of perfection; then the tension of the spiral vessels ranks so high, that they exercise their function independently of what is terrestrial in the plant, _move_ themselves in the male filaments, touch the female organ, and die in this their highest effort.

1472. Thus has it only been conceded to the plant to be, in the instant of impregnation, an animal and enjoy animal passion.

2. _Function of the Ovarium._

1473. The ovary, by its own power, is in a condition to draw towards it the chemical saps from out the stem, and as it were by its own heat to thrust new buds from its leaf-ribs, namely, the seed-pellicles or testæ. It has not, however, strength sufficient to put forth also the leaf-work, namely, the embryo, upon the apex of the seed-shell. It requires for this purpose the stimulus of the floral pollen. If the plant is very rich in sap, the ovary is so likewise, and converts itself into fruit or sarcocarp. As a rule, therefore, trees only bear a crop of fruit. If also the impregnation is less perfect, the force of the sap continues to remain inherent in the ovarian leaves; they become rich in sap, fleshy, and likewise fruity in character; trees, therefore, with imperfect or separated blossoms, as the Amentaceæ, Urticaceæ, Euphorbiaceæ, Papilionaceæ, Terebinthaceæ, and Rosaceæ, usually bring forth a crop of fruit.

1474. A stronger degree of refinement appears in these fruit-saps than in the saps of the stem, because corolla and seeds range closer to each other. They are therefore more varied and richer in substance. The fruit-substances range usually upon the side of the water or the salts, while those of the seed range upon the side of the earth or the Inflammables. The substances of the seed are flour and oil, those of the fruit sugar and acids; the former supplies food, the latter drink.

1475. Seed and ovary stand therefore in antagonism, like earth and water.

3. _Function of the Seed_.

GERMINATION.

1476. The seed is the plant contracted upon its centre, it is the heavy mineral mass, which can only undergo changes by the operation of the other elements, like as it arrived only at completion by the operation of the floral pollen. This acts upon it when within the dry ovary, like the water and oxygen in the dry earth. These changes are its development or germination.

1477. All the planetary elements belong to germination, and to growth the Cosmical also with all its actions. To germination belongs earth, water, and air; to growth, light, heat, and gravity; with all the four mineral classes also, such as earth, salt, Inflammable, and metal. The plant contains silicious and calcareous earth, salts, coal with sulphur, and lastly, iron.

1478. Germination is the disjunctive emergence wrought by means of moisture, heat and oxydation in the processes of decomposition and fermentation. No seed germinates in irrespirable kinds of air.

1479. The cotyledons or seed-lobes are the synthesis of the two processes; they are at once root and leaf, therefore resolvable into mucus, and may yet become green.

1480. In germination the elemental bodies of the root-and stalk-polarity directly emerge; the mucus or the flour separates into alcaline gum, that seeks the darkness, and into acid sugar, which elevates itself into the illuminated air.

GROWTH.

1481. Growth is none other than continued germination. The sap being polarized by the air becomes of necessity decomposed. One part evaporates as carbonic acid and water, the other coagulates into oxydized mucus or into cell-walls.

1482. Growth proceeds directly from the process of digestion and respiration, while its polar organs constantly remove further from each other.

1483. Properly speaking the digestive and respiratory processes are none other than growth, since both separate from each other. That, which originates between them, is the process of nutrition, the vascular system.

1484. Growth oscillates between the process of decomposition and that of fermentation; it is an uninterrupted fermentation.

FALL OF THE LEAF.

1485. If every pole of the plant has been perfected in an isolated manner, it has thus become identical with the air, and the aerial process ceases.

1486. With the cessation of the aerial process, the respiratory organ must also die off or perish.

1487. The decadence, or falling off, of the leaves is the result of the tension having been abrogated between them and the stem; it is a death by suffocation.

1488. The fall of the leaf therefore occurs in the autumn, or after the fruit is matured.

DURATION OF LIFE.

1489. The age of a plant is included between the the limits of the sap's impulse, and that which has been called its fall or descent.

1490. The actual fall of the sap is the death of the plant.

1491. If with the cessation of the influence of light, the polarity ceases entirely in the plant; it is then one year old or an _annual_. Every part of it dies off.

1492. In biennial plants the aerial polarity indeed disappears, but the polarity of the root remains. Flower, leaf, and stalk die.

1493. Perennial plants, also, do not entirely lose the stem-polarity, but only while they develop a new plant about the old. Flower and leaf only perish, while the water-and earth-organs remain alive.

1494. The old liber dies with every maturation of the fruit, because there the difference attains solution. But a new life develops itself in the parenchyma of the plant, and forms new liber or, properly speaking, a new plant about the old.

1495. Persistent plants consist of numerous plants, which gradually grow round about each other.

1496. In accordance with the idea of the plant, each one perishes with the maturation of the fruit.

1497. On account of the addition of the new plant about the old, the plant has also been confined to no definite magnitude and to no definite number in its mode of ramification.

1498. Indefiniteness in form, size and number, is the character of the plant, although a law lies at the basis of all this. The animal has a definite size, because several animals do not grow around each other.

III.--_PHYTOLOGY_.

1499. Hitherto the organs of the plant have been considered in a general point of view or as to their idea in time; to this now follows the development of the plant in a special sense, or its representation in space.

1500. The vegetable tissues, systems, and organs have only by degrees been disengaged from each other and independently perfected. The independent or self-substantial development of the organs constitutes definite or _individual_ plants.

1501. A plant, in which all the organs are present, separately or self-substantially developed and yet combined, is without doubt the highest in point of rank.

1502. Before it attains to this separation, nature can only produce lower forms, in which fewer organs have attained to independence. These forms constitute the diversity of plants and their plurality, for nature establishes every principal form as a finished organization.

1503. There are as many plants different from each other as there are organs, namely, tissues, anatomical systems and members.

1504. The sum of all plants is called the vegetable kingdom; _this is the self-substantial representation of all vegetable organs_. (Ed. 1st, 1810, p. 123.)

1505. The vegetable kingdom is consequently the expression of the vegetable idea, or of the perfect plant represented _in the multiplicity of individuals_; it is the plant disintegrated, or anatomised, by nature herself.

1506. Were we therefore acquainted with all vegetable organs, we should know their rank and developmental series; and thus also recognize the character, rank, and developmental series of the plants themselves, or their divisions. There can be no doubt that the lowest organs, e. g. the tissues, have been first developed and independently perfected as plants; later on they separate into anatomical systems and finally into members, whereby perfect plants must originate. _The division or classification of the vegetable kingdom is consequently that of the vegetable organs._ The Systematic of plants is a copy of that of their organs, or a plastic representation of the philosophical vegetable anatomy. With this every thing has been granted, which is requisite for the building or erection of the vegetable system. All principles, together with the methods, rest in the proposition that has been expressed.

1507. The artificial systems of plants are related to the vegetable kingdom, as the lexicon or dictionary is to language. Those systems which have hitherto been termed natural, but which should properly be called _methodical_, are related to the vegetable kingdom, as the ordinary grammar is to a language. The vegetable system must, however, be related to the vegetable kingdom, as the philosophical or genetic grammar is to language. This only agrees with the essence of the language, or is _natural_. The vegetable system is necessarily a philosophical or genetic one, that alone being truly or legitimately natural. (This system was first propounded by Oken, in the Ed. 1st of the Naturphilosophie, 1810; further developed in _Dietrich's_ Garten Journal, 1813; carried out in his Naturgeschichte fur Schülen, 1821, and in his Lehrbuch der Nat. Gesch. _Botanik_. Weimar, 1825.) The _artificial_ system collects the materials for the edifice, but leaves them to lie without order and in confusion; the _methodical_ or what has been called the natural system separates these materials and arranges them in homogeneous groups; the _genetic_, philosophical or truly natural, system, again mixes them amongst each other, but thereby actually erects the edifice. All three systems are therefore necessary and good, and no one of them merits being despised by the other; it is only when one of them imagines that it is the other, or can render the others unnecessary, that it trespasses from out its circle, and deserves reproach. Thus for _Floras_, whose ultimate object is to find out rapidly the names of plants upon botanical excursions, as also for the labelling of specimens in botanic gardens, the artificial system is the best; for the description, however, of foreign plants the methodical; but for insight into the whole vegetable world the philosophical or natural system. Would we compare Floras with each other, the latter system must certainly come into play; but then the matter to be dealt with is not about an excursion-book.

_VEGETABLE SYSTEM._

1508. Taken in a strict sense all the diversity of vegetable structure of vegetables has reference first of all to the difference in the tissues; these being either unseparated, or separated, into special systems and members. At first the tissues lie confusedly, or without order, amongst themselves. They then _separate_ in a concentric and tubular form into systems, that are encased _within_ each other, like the bark, liber, and wood, which form the _shaft_. Furthermore they separate into members, and appear one _above_ the other, as root, stalk, and foliage, which collectively may be called the _stem_; these are repeated as seed, pistil, and corolla, which together are called _flower_, and combined, _fruit_, namely, nut, plum, berry and apple. I designate by the term _stock_ or trunk all the parts as far as the blossom; and this together with the fruit I name thyrsus. The vegetable stock, whose tissues have not yet separated into members, I style, from want of a better word, _thallus_. As we divide political kingdoms into _provinces_ and _circles_, so also may these titles be suitably applied here. It is evident, that the plants which simply consist of tissues and have as yet no sheaths and members, are the _Acotyledones_; those, however, provided with sheaths, but devoid of true roots, stalk, and foliage, _Monocotyledones_; those with true foliage or reticular-veined leaves are, on the contrary, _Dicotyledones_. The natural system of vegetables stands accordingly in the following manner.

A.--STOCK-PLANTS.

Province I. HISTOPHYTA, OR TISSUE-PLANTS--Acotyledones.
Class 1. Cell-plants.
2. Duct-
3. Trachea-

II. THECOPHYTA, OR SHEATH-PLANTS--Monocotyledones.

4. Bark-plants.
5. Liber-
6. Wood-

III. ARTHROPHYTA, OR MEMBER-PLANTS--Dicotyledones.

Circle 1. _Axis-plants_--Tubulifloræ.
7. Root-plants.
8. Stalk-
9. Leaf-

B.--BLOSSOM-PLANTS.

Circle 2. _Flower-plants_--Thalamopetalæ.
10. Seed-plants.
11. Ovarium-
12. Corolla-

Circle 3. _Fruit-plants_--Calycopetalæ.
13. Nut-plants.
14. Plum-
15. Berry-
16. Apple-

1509. A slight glance at the above table shows us the procedure of Nature. The higher she ascends, the more and more she separates, and thereby increases, the organs. There may therefore be plants which have only a single organ or tissue, as well as others, which possess all.

1510. There cannot, however, be any plant which could simply possess the higher without the lower organs. Higher organized plants are not such therefore, by virtue of their having some one organ more perfectly developed, or separated into several parts; but through this, that they actually possess several different organs. The higher grade of organization depends accordingly not upon the perfection of the _Singular_, but the _number_ of the _Different_. The Perfected consists in the _multiplicity_ combined to constitute _unity_, but by no means in the simply homogeneous multitude of the _parts_. Numerous stamina may render a _corolla_ higher, but not on that account the whole plant; many digits may make a hand nobler, but not on that account, the animal. But with many digits also that hand is nobler, in which the digits are dissimilar.

_First Province._

HISTOPHYTA--ACOTYLEDONES.

_Devoid of, or without true spiral-vessels, leaves, corollæ, and pistil._

The vegetable kingdom ascends, in accordance with the five main positions of the organs, by five stages; these are again separable into larger groups, which may be called _asexual_ and _sexual_ plants.

1511. The tissues are a something internal, being, as it were, the viscera of plants or their parenchyma, which does not meet the light, and can therefore have no light-organs, which are developed only out of the foliage or leaves. The anatomical systems and organs are tissues that have become external, have attained to air and light, and are hence developed into air-and light-organs. Now, the light-organs are sexual organs. The Tissue-plants can therefore have no sexual organs; and plants divide accordingly into asexual and sexual plants. The asexual are female plants, and are consequently the first or lowest. Thus there can be thus no sexual or male plants, without the female being found that belong to them.

1512. Male or androgynous plants are only possible, if spiral vessels or tracheæ be present. They first, however, originate when the tracheæ become external, or form a circle in the stalk, i. e. are accessible by light; as in the Mono-and Dicotyledones.

1513. The asexual plants are not cryptogamic, but agamic. They do not perform self-impregnation clandestinely, but not at all; for they do not attain light-difference, and consequently not male organs. Analogues of stamina may make their appearance in the mosses, but they invariably fail to attain the development of pollen. What have been called male parts in other cryptogamia, do not merit consideration. Such projections or prefigurations are besides to be found everywhere.

1514. The asexual plants are simply formations of the tissues, of the galvanic vesicle, and are thus of a female nature. They are nothing more than a great utricle full of small vesicles, which by desiccation subdivide into _germinal dust_ or sporules, each granule whereof attracts other mucous vesicles out of the moisture, in order to form again a large utricle.

1515. The asexuals cease in the process of vegetation, where the other plants begin. With the rupture of the gemmal-or bud-vesicle in the higher plants a new world for the first time emerges into view, such as stem, leaves, blossom, and then the ultimate bud ruptures for the first time as the pericarp, and scatters its higher organized germinal powder as true seeds.

1516. An asexual plant is one, which, without all the intermediate organs of the stem, at once represents the capsule or ovary. It consists only of the beginning and end of the plant.

1517. The higher plants differ from the lower by the interposition of new organs between the two terminal organs, namely, the primary vesicle and the true seed. It may be said, that the asexual plant is naught but seed, and that the seed of the higher plants is a fungus upon a leafy peduncle, a fungus more highly organized by light.

1518. The asexual plants have no true root, stalk, and leaf; they have not even a true bark, liber, and wood, in so far as these first make their appearance through separation. Tracheæ are first exhibited in the higher ferns, and then only as constituting a single string, which occupies the middle of the plant, and consequently forms no circle or zone.

1519. As again the true seed is a leaf-formation, and possesses therefore cotyledons or seed-lobes, such seeds must be wanting in the asexual plants; they are therefore Acotyledones. From the same cause, however, the germinal leaves or plumula must be also wanting; they are therefore germless, or anembryonic.

1520. The farinaceous or granular matter, lying next to the germ when within the shell of the true seeds, is called the _albumen_ or perisperm; the seeds of the asexual plants are therefore nothing else but albumen. They are therefore devoid of the funiculus or, what has been called, umbilical cord.

1521. The involucre, wherein, in true seeds, the germ and albumen are found, is the seed-coat or testa; consequently what has been called the capsule of the asexual plants (of mosses and ferns) corresponds simply to this spermoderm or seed-covering, and is no true ovarium. The capsules of mosses and ferns are therefore seeds full of albuminous dust.

1522. If any of these be regarded as a capsule, it can be the _calyptra_ of the mosses. This, too, is probably nothing else than the external testa; the proper capsule being its internal coat.

1523. The _indusium_ of ferns incloses several capsules as they have been called, or properly seeds, and might therefore, if considered alone, be compared with an ovarium, but it is probably none other than the covering corresponding to the perichoetium that surrounds the base of the setæ in mosses. The sorus is an accumulation of seeds with pulverulent albumen contained in a membranaceous covering, the indusium.

1524. The life of the asexual plants consists simply in the galvanic process. They are the primary organisms, planted in air.

1525. As being simply galvanic process, they would require but little light and air; they therefore seek the darkness, like the roots, and thrive also in a corrupt atmosphere, in caves, mines, cellars, and such like situations. They can from the same cause thrive only in moisture, in water, upon marshy meadow lands, after rain, copious dew, and so on.

1526. They are devoid the process of fermentation, as being that which is imparted by the oxydation of air, and they therefore yield neither sugar nor acids. They are simply the organized process of putrefaction; their ultimate product is therefore germinal powder, infusorial matter. Their remaining secretions are alkaline bodies; to which belong the pungent, fetid, and nauseous excretions, as the hydrogen gas and ammonia of the fungi, the mucus of the fuci, the carbonate of lime in the lichens, the cell-threads of the mosses, the fetid principle of ferns.

1527. Very few of these plants require the course of a summer in order to perfect or complete the vital course; a single ray of light of one day's, aye, of one hour's duration, is sufficient with most of them to evoke the feeble difference, to rouse the swell of the sap, and precipitate the infusorial powder.

1528. Automatic movements, as in the leaves and stamina of the higher plants, scarcely occur in them, or at most in the ferns, from their possessing spiral vessels. They divide, according to the tissues, into three classes, into Cell-, Vessel-, and Trachea-plants.

_CLASS I._

_Cell-plants--Fungi._

Here belong those plants which consist simply of cellular tissue, having no sap-tubes and tracheæ. Such plants, too, possess no regular or hexagonal cellular tissue.

1529. The cellular tissue, in which there is only a single active process, cannot essentially alter its primary form. It is therefore an accumulation of round or cylindrical mucus-vesicles.

1530. Mucus-vesicles, in which the air-process is not as yet active, cannot be coloured green; but must have the colour of the earth.

1531. Plants, composed of amorphous and earth-coloured cellular tissue, are _Fungi_. The fungi are simply clusters of mucus-vesicles joined together in a more or less regular manner, their union being effected in dark, hollow and wet situations.

1532. They may therefore originate wherever mucous juices are evolved by the potential agency of a higher organization, and thus by putrefaction. The fungi originate by _æquivocal generation_. They are the anal-organizations of the higher plants and animals; the corrupted and luxuriating juices.

1533. Nevertheless the fungus is propagated by division of its vesicles, which again, in accordance with their peculiar laws of polarity, attract mucus-vesicles, and thus obtain the form of the earlier or parent fungus. This is only a more regulated kind of _æquivocal generation_.

1534. The origin of the fungi may therefore happen in a twofold manner, namely, by formation from other juices, and by that of their own, which is called propagation. Still at bottom both are one in kind.

1535. Their granules or vesicles are seeds, properly sporules, which are self-developed without male polarization.

DIVISION.

1536. The fungi pass moreover through stages of development, which range parallel to the vegetable classes; since it is impossible for any other organs to originate in them but such as belong to the idea of the plant. The lowest fungus can therefore change only, by endeavouring to develop in itself ducts, tracheæ, roots, and such like parts.

1537. There are accordingly as many developmental stages of the fungi as there are vegetable classes. These divisions are called _families_.

1538. The vegetable families range parallel to the classes. This law must hold good of all the classes. There are therefore in each class 16 families. An association of families upon each stage may be called an order.

1539. At first the fungus is none other than a mucus-vesicle or a small cluster of vesicles, e. g. an _uredo_ or _mildew_. Such a vesicle next becomes longitudinally extended, and includes within itself other vesicles or granules, e. g. _mould_. These mould-filaments or threads unite again so as to form a common mass, which is surrounded by an external membrane, and is then called _puff-ball_. The pulverulent granules, which were irregularly accumulated in the puff-balls, unite at length in a regular manner to constitute a trunk of varied form, as in the _ascomycetes_, e. g. _sphæriæ_. Finally, the mould-filaments with their sporules are regularly collected together in an investing membrane, which, like a puff-ball, is supported upon a stipes or stem, e. g. the sarcomycetes or _agarics_. There are therefore 5 developmental stages of the fungi, which correspond to those of the classes; viz. the parenchyma, shaft, stem, flower, and fruit; and constitute orders.

1540. Each order is resolvable again into three divisions or families, which correspond to the organs. Thus there are in each class 16 tribes or families, which obviously range parallel to the vegetable organs or classes. (Vid. Tab. B.)

1541. A tribe or family is consequently the representation of a vegetable organ within a class.

1542. The genera obey the same law; for essential differences are only conceivable through the presence of different organs.

1543. Species is in the animal kingdom that which copulates without necessity and compulsion. The same definition is applicable to plants. The species range, without doubt, according to the diversities in the individual organs themselves, which admit of a great multitude of combinations, the number of which is not as yet to be determined.

1544. The component parts of the fungi are either perfectly indifferent, mucous or gelatinoid matter; or they are of an alcaline nature, being acrid, poisonous, and such like. Their odour is usually dead, disagreeable, and loathsome, or analogous to their essential process of decomposition.

_CLASS II._

_Vessel-or Duct-plants--Mosses._

1545. The intercellular passages or succigerent vessels of plants make their first appearance in a state of perfection, when, the cells being extended lengthways, have become hexagonal and are placed in regular juxtaposition. In these plants therefore we meet with regular cellular tissue, but still without spiral vessels or tracheæ.

1546. As the vessels or ducts constitute the fundamental tissue of the liber, while this is the principal system of the stalk; so now does the stem begin to be manifested and separated from the fruit. The seeds are no longer therefore distributed in the present class throughout the whole trunk, but developed in a special involucrum or theca, which corresponds to the puff-ball, or to the pileus of the higher organized fungi.

1547. Plants with vessels, and consequently a cauliform formation, have at once also the commencement of a bark, and next the green colour. The vascular are the first green plants, and differ chiefly through that character from the fungi. They are the _Fucacæ_ or _Sea-wracks_.

1548. They have the colour of the water, because the course of the sap corresponds to the aqueous process; they are aquatic, just as the brown fungi are terrestrial, plants. Their component parts are aqueous, indifferent, mucous, and filose. Their habitation is the water itself or bogs. If they occupy dry situations, they live only when it rains.

1549. They likewise pass through the five stages of vegetation, and form therefore five orders.

1550. Order 1. The lowest or _Tissue-mosses_, corresponding to the Uredines; are again naught but cells or mucous pellicles, but, from growing in water, and being consequently exposed to light and a stronger oxydation, they are green--_Tremellini_.

1551. They multiply by subdivision, since new vesicles or granules are developed in their interior, which become separated, and subsist or continue to grow for themselves. They therefore originate also by æquivocal generation, but by such an one as constantly occurs in water and light.

1552. The second order, or the _Vascular mosses_ corresponds to the sheaths, or to the Hyphomycetes. They are long filaments replete with granules, growing in water, and therefore green--_Confervaceæ_. These plants begin to ramify, and either increase by this means or by effusion of granular matter.

1553. The third order, that of the _Tracheal mosses_, corresponds to the stem, or to the Gasteromycetes. A membranous trunk originates in water, which in certain places secretes the seeds in special vesicles or cysts--_Fucales_ or connate Confervæ. The fuci have at once the form of a stalk with root and leaves, because they correspond to these three organs of the axis.

1554. The fourth order, the _Floral mosses_, endeavours to obtain the _blossom_, and therefore elevates itself out of the water, but loses on that account the trunk-like character, and exhibits for the most part only membranous expansions, upon which seeds are secreted, which being usually of a beautiful colour, thus assume the appearance of corollæ--_Lichenales_. The lichens are fuci in dry situations. They correspond to the Pyrenomycetes or Sphæriaceæ.

1555. As the variegated colours appear in the blossom, so do they also in the lichens; but here they are for the first time chemically developed, distributed throughout the whole substance, and concealed. Most lichens yield colouring matters.

1556. As the stem is, in accordance with their signification, wanting to the lichens, they thus require a foreign trunk for their nutrition. They are therefore developed for the most part upon other plants, and principally upon the bark.

1557. Lastly, the fifth order, _Fruit-mosses_, originates through the development of a self-substantial _fruit_ upon a cauliform stem--the _Mosses_ proper.

1558. As these are the highest plants of this class, and those that directly precede the tracheal formation, so the bark already resolves itself into individual leaves, which are, however, still destitute of spiral vessels.

1559. What have been called the seeds or sporules are accumulated in a capsule-like fruit upon the summit of the stalk. This fruit corresponds to the pileated fungus, and therefore springs up in an opercular manner like the latter.

1560. But this capsule is only a spermoderm, which incloses albuminous granules that have no proper germ or seed-lobes; they are plants with seed-vessels or pyxidia, upon an open-leaved stalk.

1561. They divide likewise into sixteen families. (Vid. Tab. B.)

_CLASS III._

_Trachea-plants--Ferns._

1562. At first a fascicle only of spiral vessels can originate, which is necessarily surrounded by cellular tissue, and therefore lies in the middle of the plant. Such plants are the _Filices_ or ferns.

1563. As the spiral vessels are the antetype of the leaves, so does the trunk here obtain the form of the leaf, without itself producing true leaves. For, in the ferns, the fruits lie upon the back of the apparent leaf, which can only be the trunk.

1564. The fruits, being further removed from the fungi, no longer spring up in an opercular, but in a valvular, manner like the higher capsules.

1565. Green plants with imperfect spiral vessels and blossoms, and also with naked seeds devoid of true capsules, belong to the class of Ferns.