I go on with Figuier: the next passage is very valuable.

5. "The tige is the part of plants which, directed into the air, supports,
and _gives growing power to_, the branches, the twigs, the leaves, and the
flowers. The form, strength, and direction of the tige depend on the part
that each plant has to play among the vast vegetable population of our
globe. Plants which need for their life a pure and often-renewed air, are
borne by a straight tige, robust and tall. When they have need only of a
moist air, more condensed, and more rarely renewed, when they have to creep
on the ground or glide in thickets, the tiges are long, flexible, and
dragging. If they are to float in the air, sustaining themselves on more
robust vegetables, they are provided with flexible, slender, and supple
tiges."

6. Yes; but in that last sentence he loses hold of his main idea, and to me
the important one,--namely, the connexion of the form of stem with the
quality of the air it requires. And that idea itself is at present vague,
though most valuable, to me. A strawberry creeps, with a flexible stem, but
requires certainly no less pure air than a wood-fungus, which stands up
straight. And in our own hedges and woods, are the wild rose and
honeysuckle signs of unwholesome air?

"And honeysuckle loved to crawl
Up the lone crags and ruined wall.
I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade
The sun in all his round surveyed."

It seems to me, in the nooks most haunted by honeysuckle in my own wood,
that the reason for its twining is a very feminine one,--that it likes to