438 OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. mon glebe, and that life and death should grow and thrive within an inch of each other. , What wondrous and inimitable skill must be attributed to that supreme power, that first cause, who can so infinitely diver- sify the effects, where the servile second cause is so uniform, and always the same* ? It is not for me in this place to enter into a long detail of philosophy, and skew how the minute fibres and tubes of the dif- ferent seeds and roots of vegetables take hold of, attract, and receive the little particles of earth and water proper for their own growth ; how they form them at first into their own shapes, and send them up aspiring above ground by degrees, and mould them so, as to frame the stalks, the branches, the leaves and the buds of every flower, herb and tree. But I presume the world is too weary of substantial forms, and plastic powers and names without ideas, to be persuaded that these mere creatures of fancy should ever be the operators in this wondrous work. It is much more honourable to attribute all to the design and long fore- thought of God the Creator, who formed the first vegetables in such a manner, and appointed their little parts to ferment under the warm sun-beams, according to such established laws of motion, as to mould the atoms of earth and water which were near them into their own figure, to make thetn grow up into trunk and branches, which every night should harden into firmness and stability; and again, to mould new atoms of the same ele- ment into leaves and bloom, fruit and seed, which last being dropt into the earth, should producenew plants of the same like- ness to the end of the world. If I were to represent this matter to the unlearned part of mankind, I might do it perhaps more intelligibly to them by this rude and coarse simile than by the nicest accuraciesof philoso- phical description. Suppose a mass of uniform green wax of a very soft temperature, and a little mollified by the sun beams, should be strained through small round pieces of cloth of all varieties of texture, shall I name for instance, canvass, sack- cloth, holland, diaper, lawn, 31.c. In some of which I will sup- pose the threads were so woven, as to make different stripes and figures. Now if the wax were forced upwards through all those cloths, you would see a vast variety, as it were, of rising sta- mina or fibres, which shall be supposed to constitute the different round stalks of these artificial vegetables : These would cer- Note, I do not pretend that all the particles of which common earth is com- posed, are exactly uniform and similar. It is allowed that there are some atoms of itmuch more suited to vegetation than others, and perhaps to the nourishment ofsome vegetables rather than others: The same isgranted concerning water. But I call these elements, or materials uniform in this respect, that in every crumb of earth, and in eve-y drop of water, there is'ns such variety possible, as actually to contain the proper parts of every plant in their own form.
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