being transferred in a body to the ownership of a certain agriculturist in
the neighborhood of Evreux, who dealt largely in such articles. There
have been evil disposed vegetables that have seen fit to reproach us
with this sale as a stigma on our family history, but I have ever
considered it myself as a circumstance of which one has no more reason
to be ashamed than a D'Uzes has to blush for the robberies of a baron
of the middle ages. Each is an incident in the progress of civilization; the
man and the vegetable alike taking the direction pointed out by
Providence for the fulfilment of his or its destiny.

{Milesian = slang for Irish, from Milesius, mythical Spanish conqueror
of Ireland; Evreux = town in Normandy, France; a D'Uzes = a member
of an ancient noble family in southern France}

Plants have sensation as well as animals. The latter, however, have no
consciousness anterior to their physical births, and very little, indeed, for
some time afterwards; whereas a different law prevails as respects us;
our mental conformation being such as to enable us to refer our moral
existence to a period that embraces the experience, reasoning and
sentiments of several generations. As respects logical inductions, for
instance, the linum usitatissimum draws as largely on the intellectual
acquisitions of the various epochas that belonged to the three or four
parent stems which preceded it, as on its own. In a word, that
accumulated knowledge which man inherits by means of books,
imparted and transmitted information, schools, colleges, and universities,
we obtain through more subtle agencies that are incorporated with our
organic construction, and which form a species of hereditary
mesmerism; a vegetable clairvoyance that enables us to see with the
eyes, hear with the ears, and digest with the understandings of our
predecessors.