. Insect transformations . rcasti-cally, that all nature appears, to the Professor ofLund, to be nothing but confervce Passing over what has been published on thisstrange doctrine by Vaucher, Girod-Chantrans, Tre-viranus. Cams, and others, we shall only stop tomention the more recent observations of FrancisUnger. The plant he selected was the Confervadilatata fi of Roth. Within the space of one hour,says he, I succeeded in tracing, not only the dimi-nution of vitality and death of the anin)alcules, butalso the subsequent development of the dead animalsinto germinating plants, in s
. Insect transformations . rcasti-cally, that all nature appears, to the Professor ofLund, to be nothing but confervce Passing over what has been published on thisstrange doctrine by Vaucher, Girod-Chantrans, Tre-viranus. Cams, and others, we shall only stop tomention the more recent observations of FrancisUnger. The plant he selected was the Confervadilatata fi of Roth. Within the space of one hour,says he, I succeeded in tracing, not only the dimi-nution of vitality and death of the anin)alcules, butalso the subsequent development of the dead animalsinto germinating plants, in such a manner as toestablish the truth of the fact. He adds with greatsimplicity, 1 could scarcely believe my own eyes.^Like Agardh, he has given figures of these miracu * Quoted in .Annales des Sciences Natureiles for 1828. t .Agardh, Icones .Alg. ined i, 10. t Diet. ClassiquedHist. Nat., x, 469. § Annaies des Sciences Nat., 1828. ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE TRANSMUTATIONS. 131 Ions changes, wliicli our readers may be curious to. Supposed animal and vejjeiuble iiieiiiinoi piloses. Since tlie only proof of these plants being trans-muted (as is alleged) into animals, appears to betheir acquiring motion,* and, as Unger says, swimming freely about; we think we should beequally entitled to infer that camphor is animatedbecause it moves spontaneously when thrown intowater. This property in camphor has n<it hithertobeen satisfactorily explained; and it would undoubt-edly be better to leave the phenomena described byour advocates for transmutation likewise unexplained,than to leap at once to their startling conclusions. We might as well, says Bory St Vincent, astonish the world with the discovery of a fig-tree transniited into a mulberry tree, because theBroiissonctia, when young, has the leaves of the one,and when old of the other; and by such a system ofobserving we shall end in looking upon the oak andthe mistletoe as the same plant: the wand of Circecould not produce more astounduig c
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