The natural history of plants, their forms, growth, reproduction, and distribution; . amorphosis. Linnaeus had instituted acomparison between the metamorphosis of plants and that of insects; in particular,he likened the calyx to the ruptured integument of a chrysalis and the internal partsof a flower to the perfect insect (Imago). He also made many different attempts toestablish analogies between the development of plants and that of animals; and inso doing he opened up a wide field for the speculations of the nature philosophersin the earlier part of the nineteenth century. An extensive study
The natural history of plants, their forms, growth, reproduction, and distribution; . amorphosis. Linnaeus had instituted acomparison between the metamorphosis of plants and that of insects; in particular,he likened the calyx to the ruptured integument of a chrysalis and the internal partsof a flower to the perfect insect (Imago). He also made many different attempts toestablish analogies between the development of plants and that of animals; and inso doing he opened up a wide field for the speculations of the nature philosophersin the earlier part of the nineteenth century. An extensive study of this subject now commenced; and writers on nature-philosophy worked indefatigably at the amplification and modification of thistheme, first broached by Linnaeus. A plant is a magnetic needle attracted towards the light from the earth intothe air. It is a galvanic bubble, and, as such, is earth, water, and air. The plant-bubble possesses two opposite extremities, a single terrestrial end and a dual aerialend; and so plants must be looked upon as being organisms which manifest a. Fig. 3.—Goethes Urpflanze. THE STUDY OF PLANTS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. 13 continual struggle to become earth on the one hand and air on the other, unmixedmetal at one end, and dual air at the other. A plant is a radius, which becomessingle towards the centre, whilst it divides or unfolds towards the periphery; it isnot therefore an entire circle or sphere, but only a segment of one of those individual animal, on the contrary, constitutes of itself a sphere, and is there-fore equivalent to all plants put together. Animals are entire worlds, satellites ormoons, which circle independently round the earth; whereas plants are only equalto a heavenly body in their totality. An animal is an infinitude of plants. Ablossom which, when severed from the stem, preserves by its own movement thegalvanic process or life, is an animal. An animal is a flower-bubble set free fromthe earth and living
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbotany, bookyear1902
