Volume 3

A report on the progress of vegetable physiology during the year 1837 ... / Translated from the German by William Francis.

  • Franz Meyen
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A report on the progress of vegetable physiology during the year 1837 ... / Translated from the German by William Francis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    terest evinced with regard to these reports both in England and in France by translations*, as well as by the kind transmis- sion of some memoirs, which otherwise would not have come so early under our view, convinces us that the naturalists of those countries will feel a greater desire to possess a more general knowledge of our very numerous German labours in this branch of science than heretofore. I shall endeavour in future that the report may always ap- pear sooner, perhaps in the month of March ; by which some periodicals, it is true, which are constantly in arrear, will be left over. In the present report we have been able to avail our- selves of the valuable Annales des Sciences Naturelles only as far as the September Number for 1837 ; for to the 6th of May 1838 we did not possess in Berlin the later numbers. I must also remark, that of the larger general works which appeared during the past year on vegetable physiology, such detailed reports have not been given as of the smaller publications and separate memoirs; since this would have been a task beyond the powers of the reporter. On the Spiritual Life of Plants. . M. v. Martiust has published his views on the soul of plants, with which I may commence the present year’s report. It appears, observes M. v. Martius, as if natural philosophers were in general not inclined to admit in the essence of the plant these two spheres, body and soul, as if they would con- cede a soul only to animals and man. It is usual to regard as the essential predicate of the soul, perception such as it appears in animal life ; and, as in the vegetable kingdom, we are acquainted with very few phzenomena which admit of our concluding upon a power of perception in plants, they have been declared not to possess a soul. Von Martius points out, that even animal forms sink so low in the scale of organiza- tion, that all the characteristics of animal life disappear in them; on the other hand indications of vegetable life display * The English translation here referred to was published in the 68th, 69th, 70th, and 71st Numbers of the London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, to the pages of which Journal I shall have frequent occasion to refer the reader.—TRansu. t+ Reden und Beitrige iiber Gegenstande aus dem Gebiete der Natur- * forschung, Stuttgard und Tubingen, 1838. ~ We.
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