Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Essays on various subjects / by Cuthbert Collingwood. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![If the Study of the structure of vegetable organs be of so interesting a nature, from its unfoldng relations the most un- looked for, and adaptations the most exquisite, a consideration of the plant in action and in full performance of its physiolo- gical functions is no less important, as illustrating the remark- able position occupied by vegetables in the organic scale, and the entire dependence upon them of animals, not only for subsistence, but also for the very air they breathe. The plant stands between the herbivorous animal and the morganic elements which compose the crust of the earth, and by a vital or chemico-vital power entirely peculiar to itself, converts the latter into a pabulum adapted to the former. No animal can exist unless it receives as food matter in a certain state of com- bination, which we designate organised; and the plant, with which such a necessity does not exist, is constantly preparing for the animal vast stores of nutriment by taking up the simple elements of which the earth's crust is composed, and combining them into ternary and quarternary compounds of the most complex description. The vegetable world is a vast laboratory, in which inorganic matter is taken up, elaborated, and fixed, no longer dead, mineral, and innutritions, but part of a living tissue, performing vital actions so long as the organism exists, and affording a pabu.lum fitted for animals, by means of which the highest functions of the perceptive creature may be ade- quately performed. Viewed in this aspect, the vegetable creation receives an importance inferior to no department of Nature. A plant may be regarded on the one hand as a Hving organism whose whole existence is one round of antagonism to animal life : whatever is essential to the well-being and fimctions of an animal, we may be almost certain to be opposed to] the requirements of a plant—those elements which are fatal to the one, are the very essence of existence to the other. But, on the other hand, this very antagonism is made to subserve to the most perfectly balanced harmony between the two, and to result in their mutual and inseparable advantage. They are therefore rather to be regarded as dual powers, mutually assisting one another, than as antagonistic; the one totally and entirely dependent upon the other—a disturbance in the balance](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24756374_0028.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
