nthers, when
mature, approach the stigma, in others the female organ approaches to the
male. In a plant of collinsonia, a branch of which is now before me, the
two yellow stamens are about three eights of an inch high, and diverge from
each other, at an angle of about fifteen degrees, the purple style is half
an inch high, and in some flowers is now applied to the stamen on the right
hand, and in others to that of the left; and will, I suppose, change place
to-morrow in those, where the anthers have not yet effused their powder.

I ask, by what means are the anthers in many flowers, and stigmas in other
flowers, directed to find their paramours? How do either of them know, that
the other exists in their vicinity? Is this curious kind of storge produced
by mechanic attraction, or by the sensation of love? The latter opinion is
supported by the strongest analogy, because a reproduction of the species
is the consequence; and then another organ of sense must be wanted to
direct these vegetable amourettes to find each other, one probably
analogous to our sense of smell, which in the animal world directs the
new-born infant to its source of nourishment, and they may thus possess a
faculty of perceiving as well as of producing odours.

Thus, besides a kind of taste at the extremities of their roots, similar to
that of the extremities of our lacteal vessels, for the purpose of
selecting their proper food: and besides different kinds of irritability
residing in the various glands, which separate honey, wax, resin, and other
juices from their blood; vegetable life seems to possess an organ of sense
to distinguish the variations of heat, another to distinguish the varying
degrees of moisture, another of light, another of touch, and probably
another analogous to our sense of smell. To these must be added the
indubitable evidence of their passion of love, and I think we may truly
conclude, that they are furnished with a common sensorium belonging to each
bud and that they must occasionally repeat those perceptions either in
their dreams or waking hours, and consequently possess ideas of so many of
the properties of the external world, and of their own existence.

* * * * *

SECT. XIV.

OF THE PRODUCTION OF IDEAS.

I. _Of material and immaterial beings. Doctrine of St. Paul._ II. 1.
_Of the sense of touch. Of solidity._ 2. _Of figure. Motion. Time.
Place. Space. Number._ 3. _Of the pene