aquatic plants the gills of fish; that there are other systems of vessels
resembling the vena portarum of quadrupeds, or the aorta of fish; that the
digestive power of vegetables is similar to that of animals converting the
fluids, which they absorb, into sugar; that their seeds resemble the eggs
of animals, and their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring. And,
lastly, that the anthers and stigmas are real animals, attached indeed to
their parent tree like polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous
motion; that they are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with
powers of reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths
and butterflies, which plunder their nectaries. See Botanic Garden, Part I.
add. note XXXIX.

The male flowers of vallisneria approach still nearer to apparent
animality, as they detach themselves from the parent plant, and float on
the surface of the water to the female ones. Botanic Garden, Part II. Art.
Vallisneria. Other flowers of the classes of monecia and diecia, and
polygamia, discharge the fecundating farina, which floating in the air is
carried to the stigma of the female flowers, and that at considerable
distances. Can this be effected by any specific attraction? or, like the
diffusion of the odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents
of winds, and the accidental miscarriages of it counteracted by the
quantity of its production?

2. This leads us to a curious enquiry, whether vegetables have ideas of
external things? As all our ideas are originally received by our senses,
the question may be changed to, whether vegetables possess any organs of
sense? Certain it is, that they possess a sense of heat and cold, another
of moisture and dryness, and another of light and darkness; for they close
their petals occasionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or darkness.
And it has been already shewn, that these actions cannot be performed