polypi or coral insects, but capable of spontaneous
motion; that they are affected with the passion of love, and furnished with
powers of reproducing their species, and are fed with honey like the moths
and butterflies, which plunder their nectaries. See Botanic Garden, Part I.
add. note XXXIX.

The male flowers of vallisneria approach still nearer to apparent
animality, as they detach themselves from the parent plant, and float on
the surface of the water to the female ones. Botanic Garden, Part II. Art.
Vallisneria. Other flowers of the classes of monecia and diecia, and
polygamia, discharge the fecundating farina, which floating in the air is
carried to the stigma of the female flowers, and that at considerable
distances. Can this be effected by any specific attraction? or, like the
diffusion of the odorous particles of flowers, is it left to the currents
of winds, and the accidental miscarriages of it counteracted by the
quantity of its production?

2. This leads us to a curious enquiry, whether vegetables have ideas of
external things? As all our ideas are originally received by our senses,
the question may be changed to, whether vegetables possess any organs of
sense? Certain it is, that they possess a sense of heat and cold, another
of moisture and dryness, and another of light and darkness; for they close
their petals occasionally from the presence of cold, moisture, or darkness.
And it has been already shewn, that these actions cannot be performed
simply from irritation, because cold and darkness are negative quantities,
and on that account sensation or volition are implied, and in consequence a
sensorium or union of their nerves. So when we go into the light, we
contract the iris; not from any stimulus of the light on the fine muscles
of the iris, but from its motions being associated with the sensation of
too much light on the retina: which could not take place without a
sensorium or center of union of the nerves of the iris with those of
vision. See Botanic Garden, Part I. Canto 3. l. 440. note.

Besides these organs of sense, which distinguish cold, moisture, and
darkness, the leaves of mimosa, and of dionaea, and of drosera, and the
stamens of many flowers, as of the berbery, and the numerous class of
syngenesia, are sensible to mechanic impact, that is, they possess a sense
of touch, as well as a common sensorium; by the medium of which their
muscles are excited into action. Lastly, in many flowers the a