will be a little more particular. He commences with now ticing the seed of the plant, which he denominates its egg; he examines the structure and component parts of this vegetable egg, in what manner the root issues from one part of its central organ (its corcle or heartlet), and the trunk from another part; then he traces the respective structure of these derived organs, and the means by which in several plants the one may be made interchangeably to assume the functions of the other: he next unfolds, so to speak, the substances of which the trunk consists; elucidates the process of its annual growth and lignification; treats of the number and nature of the different systems of vegetable vessels, and investigates the questions of vegetable circulation, irritability, and contractibility. He thus terminates this branch of his enquiry.

In fine, the great mass of the facts and phænomena of vegetable life has so close a resemblance and parallelism to the facts and phænomena of animal life, if we except those which relate to the rational and immortal mind, with which I have no concern at present, as clearly to indicate the application of one common system to both, as far as one common system can be made to apply; and, if I mistake not, to demonstrate one common derivation from one Almighty Cause."

Mr. Good proceeds, in the second place, to point out a few of the resemblances of vegetables to the economy or habits of animals, selecting those which are either most curious or most important; such, for example, as that plants, like animals, are propagated by sexual connection, the anomalies from the general rule being as various in animals as in vegetables;-that the blood of plants, like that of animals, is compound;-that, as in animal, so in vegetable life, the very same tribe, or even individual, which in some of its organs secretes a wholesome aliment, in other organs secretes a deadly poison;-that some vege→ tables, as well as some animals, exfoliate their cuticle annually-that vegetables as well as animals are subject to the classification of locomotive or migratory, and fixed or permanent;-that plants, like animals, have a wonderful power of maintaining their common temperature, whatever be the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere;-that both plants and animals are capable of existing in very great degrees of heat and cold;-and that both plants and animals are susceptible of the division into terrestrial, aquatic, amphibious, and aërial.

Our author lastly enters upon the question of converti bility; and here shews that vegetable matter can only be assimilated to animal, by parting with its excess of carbon, and receiving a supply of its deficiency of azot. The first

of these is affected by the triple co-operation of the stomach, the lungs, and the skin; the second, at the lungs, by the process of respiration, in conjunction with what goes on at the skin, by the process of absorption. Then, to complete the circle, it is shewn that by means of putrefaction, the radical elements of animal matter return to their original affinities; so that, as Mr. Good observes,

By simple, binary, or ternary attractions and combinations, the whole of the substance constituting the animal system, when destitute of its vital principle, its rational and immortal spirit, flies off progressively to convey new pabulum to the world of vegetables; and nothing is left behind but Jime, or the earth of bones, and soil, or the earth of vegetables: the former furnishing plants with a perpetual stimulus by the eagerness with which it imbibes oxygen, and the latter offering them a food ready prepared for their digestive organs.' pp. 48, 49.

The operation of the chief septics,-air, moisture, and heat, as accessaries to putrefaction, is then pointed out; and after some just remarks, suggested by the production of adipocire in the fosses communes or common burial caverns in the churchyard of the Innocents at Paris, the oration concludes as follows:

But excepting in situations of this kind, in reality, in every situation in which dead animal matter, destitute of its spiritus intus, its divine and immortal principle, is exposed to the usual auxiliaries of putrefaction, putrefaction will necessarily ensue, and the balance will be fairly maintained: -the common elements of vital organization will be set at liberty to commence a new career, and the animal will restore to the vegetable the whole which it has antecedently derived from it.

In this manner is it then, gentlemen, that nature, or rather that the GoD of nature is for ever unfolding that simple but beautiful round of action, that circulus æterni motûs, as Beccher has elegantly expressed it, by which every system is made to contribute to the well-being of every system, every part to the harmony and happiness of the whole: establishing his perfections, confounding infidelity, and overpowering us, whenever we contemplate it as we ought, with the sublimest emotions of gratitude, adoration, and love.' p. 56.

In every part of this elaborate disquisition, for such it must be termed, we find marks of various reading, of extensive research, of cautious experiment, and of acute reasoning. Many of the facts brought forward are novel and striking. We might make numerous extracts which we are persuaded would be highly entertaining to most of our readers; but we must content ourselves with selecting two or three. Speaking of the secretion of wholesome and poisonous matter by different organs of the same individual, Mr. Good, after enumerating some curious instances, says,

And truly extraordinary is it, and highly worthy of notice, that various plants or juices of plants, which are fatally poisonous to some

animals, may not only be eaten with impunity by others, but will afford them a sound and wholesome nutriment. How numerous are the insect tribes that feed and fatten on all the species of euphorbia, or noxious spurge! The dhanesa, or Indian buceros, feeds to excess on the colubrina or nux vomica; and the land-crab on the berries of the hippomane or manchineel-tree. The leaves of the kalmia latifolia are feasted upon by the deer, and the round-horned elk t, but are mortally poisonous to sheep, to horned cattle, to horses, and to man. The bee extracts honey without injury from its nectary, but the man who partakes of that honey after it is deposited in the hive-cells falls a victim to his repast. Some very singular cases in proof of this assertion occurred at Philadelphia no longer ago than the year 1790, in the autumn and winter of which an extensive mortality was produced amongst those who had partaken of the honey that had been collected in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, or had feasted on the common American pheasant, or pinnated groust as we call it in our own country. The attention of the American government was excited by the general distress, a minute examination into the cause of the mortality ensued, and it was satisfactorily ascertained that the honey had been chiefly extracted from the flowers of the kalmia latifolia, and that the pheasants which had proved thus poisonous had fed harmlessly on its leaves. In consequence of which a public proclamation was issued, prohibiting the use of the pheasant, as a food, for that season.' pp. 22-24.

From our author's account of aërial plants, or those which have no root whatever, we select the following:

Perhaps the plant most decisive upon this subject is the aërial epidendrum, first, if I mistake not, described by that excellent Portuguese phytologist Loureiro, and denominated aërial from its very extraordinary properties. This is a native of Java and the East Indies beyond the Ganges; and, in the latter region, it is no uncommon thing for the inhabitants to pluck it up on account of the elegance of its leaves, the beauty of its flower, and the exquisite odour it diffuses, and to suspend it by a silken cord from the cielings of their rooms; where, from year to year, it continues to put forth new fragrance, excited alone to new life and action by the stimulus of the surrounding atmosphere. pp. 39, 40.

Our last extract will corroborate the half-discredited account of MM. Humboldt and Bonpland, relative to fishes being thrown out alive from a volcano during its explosions:

Air has often been breathed by the human species with impunity at 264°. Tillet mentions its having been respired at 300°; and Morantin, one instance, at 325°, and that for the space of five minutes. Sonnerat found fishes existing in a hot spring at the Manillas at 158° || and M. Humboldt and M. Bonpland, in travelling through the province of Quito in South America, perceived other fishes thrown up alive and apparently in health from the bottom of a volcano, in the course of its explosions, along with water and heated vapour that raised the thermometer to 210o,

* Cancer ruricola.
Tetrao cupido.

+ Cervus wapiti of Barton.,
§ Epidendrum flos aëris,

He graduates by Reaumur's thermometer, and calculates the heat upon this at 69°.

being only two degrees short of the boiling point.*

This last assertion

has been discredited by some naturalists in our own country, but I think too hastily; and I am happy to have it in my power, on this occasion, to add in no small degree to the testimony of these enterprising and very observant travellers. The manuscript now in my hands is an autographic note, written by the late lord Bute, himself an excellent zoologist, to his friend the late Reverend William Jones of Nayland in Suffolk, as justly celebrated for his philosophical as for his theological publications, and was communicated to me by Edward Walker, Esquire, of Gestingthorpe, Essex, (who married Mr. Jones's only daugher,) a gentleman who is himself well versed in botanical science. In this note, after deservedly complimenting Mr. Jones on a philosophical work he had just produced, his noble correspondent adds, "Lord Bute cannot help imparting to Mr. Jones a singular observation made by him in June last, at the baths of Abano near the Euganian mountains in the borders of the Paduan state, famous in ancient authors: they are strong sulphur boiling springs, oozing out of a rocky eminence in great numbers, spreading over an acre of the top of a gentle hill. In the midst of these boiling springs, within three feet of five or six of them, rises a tepid one, about blood-warm, the only source used for drinking: but the extraordinary circumstance is, that not only confervas, &c. were found in the bailing springs, but numbers of small black beetles that died on being taken out, and plunged into cold waters. How amazingly must the great Author of nature have formed these creatures to bear a constant heat of above 200' !”

I take it for granted that the animals here referred to were not species of the scarabaus or genuine beetle, which is not a water-insect, but of the dytiscus or hydrophil which are so, and which have so near a resemblance to the scarabæus, as to be denominated water-beetles by many zoologists. And upon this explanation suffer me to observe, that it is impossible for any collusion to have taken place between these different witnesses, unconnected in every respect as they must have been with each other, living at different periods, and travelling to different quarters of the globe; and that hence, in the opinion of every man of candour, the testimony of the one cannot fail in a very considerable degree to establish the testimony of the other.' pp.31-33.

There are, indeed, numerous facts, all of which tend to confirm the statement of these intrepid travellers. Dogs have existed without apparent inconvenience in a temperature of 236° measured by Fahrenheit's thermometer, a heat exceeding that of boiling water by 24°, a species of tænia has been found alive in a boiled carp: the oven girls in some parts of Germany have sustained a heat of 257° for a quarter of an hour; one giri supported it ten minutes when augmented to 2880 without inconvenience, and another breathed in air heated to 325° for five minutes +: the incombustible man, de

Recueil d'Observations de Zoologie et de Anatomie comparée.
Hist. Acad. Scienc. 1764.

scribed by Dr, Sementini of Naples, would receive boiling oil into his mouth, and bathe his fingers in fused lead, without injury and to come nearer home, Sir Joseph Banks bore a heated room at 211o, while Sir Charles Blagden has himself given an account † of his sustaining the heat of 260° in the surrounding factitious atmosphere. Now, if such degrees of heat could be borne, without great inconvenience, by animals formed to exist in a much lower temperature, it surely will require no great stretch of credulity to believe, that animals may have been formed with an organization suited to these elevated states of temperature.

But it is time to terminate these observations, which we have been induced to extend much farther than we first designed, by the interest we feel in the curious subjects of Mr. Good's investigation, and the pleasure his essay has afforded us. Though small in size, it is a repository of important facts, many of them little known; to which, the student of medicine, or of natural history, and all indeed who can derive pleasure and benefit from an enlightened survey of nature, will feel indebted to us for directing their attention.

Art.VII. Introduction to an Analytical Dictionary of the English Language. By David Booth. 8vo. pp. 168. Price 5s. Johnson, Vernor and Hood. 1806.

1

THE unusual, and unavoidable delay, which has befallen our notice of this work, will not be imputed, by any of our constant readers, to a distaste for the subject of which it treats. So much is yet wanted, and that so urgently, in order to place the study of our vernacular tongue on a level with that which has been devoted to most other European languages, that we regard with pleasure every fresh mark of attention to so important an object; although we have too frequently to regret the inadequacy of qualification, that is betrayed by philological adventurers in this arduous investigation.

No student, who has been accustomed to avail himself of the invaluable labours of Stephanus or Scapula, can be insensible of the advantages to be derived from an analytical dictionary of the language that he wishes to explore. Such a work, executed by a person well acquainted with the sources of the language under consideration, and duly attentive to its essential characteristics, must greatly facilitate the attainment of that precision, which is indispensable to perspicuity, and conducive to every other excellence of com*Phil. Mag. Vol. xxxii.

+ Phil. Trans. Vols. lxv, and lxviii.