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NOTES OF A READER.


THE VEGETABLE WORLD.

We pencil a few passages, at random, from Part 14 of _Knowledge for the
People_--(Botany, concluded.)

_Why does snow, when in contact with leaves and stems, melt more speedily
than when lodged upon dead substances?_

Because of the internal heat of the plants, heat being a production of the
vegetable as well as animal body, though in a much lower degree in the
former than the latter. Mr. Hunter appears to have detected this heat by a
thermometer applied in frosty weather to the internal parts of vegetables
newly opened. It is evident that a certain appropriate portion of heat is
a necessary stimulus to the constitution of every plant, without which its
living principle is destroyed.--_Smith_.

_Why is fructification so important to plants?_

Because it continues them by seeds, and, according to Sir James Smith,
"all other modes of propagation are but the extension of an individual,
and, sooner or later, terminate in its total extinction." Dr. Drummond is
of a contrary opinion, and quotes the following fact:--"In South America