CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. WHETHER, in the vegetable kingdom, any low, modified degree of conscious existence resides, has frequently formed one amidst my solitary ruminations, as I have gazed upon the towering oak of the forest, or pondered over the humble primrose on its grassy bank. No test, with which we are yet acquainted, can be successfully employed to satisfy this curious speculation: the best supported conjecture must be allowed to occupy the place of such positive solution, as, in the present condition of the human faculties, will, we may venture to conclude, never be attained. Two of the colloquial observations, pro and con, which we occasionally hear on this occult and insinuating enquiry, are indeed, extremely loose and feeble. On the first, the most general and hackneyed re mark, amounts to no more, than that certain plants seem to manifest consciousness by their shrinking from the touch, or even from the very near approach of an object, or substance. But, this may be referred to such mechanical or electric principle, as the natural philosopher is prepared to explain in a manner, sufficient, let us say, for the purposes of establishing probability, and consequently sufficient for the occasion. Again, on the contra side, the objector may be heard to suggest, that as the vegetable kingdom possesses not any locomotive power, they probably inherit not any faculty of consciousness. a slender, unsupported probability is this? requiring, only, that we should replyneither does the oyster, which adheres to the rock, or lies motionless in his native bed; nor the sea anemony, with others of the class of zoophytes. What Equally trifling and insufficient is another remark, coming from the same side; (viz.) that, if the faculty of consciousness is inherent in the vegetable kingdom, it must become to it the cause of much wanton suffering, as well as of a general, habitual, and unavoidable infliction. We shall first reply-perhaps not. It must be quite possible; it must be quite easy, for the Author of Nature to fashion any subjects of his creation for receptacles of agreeable sensation, by a modified and appropriate consciousness; while the faculty may be withheld of relinquishing it with pain. But, instead of balancing so light an objection by the animadversion which it has produced, I would just remind the propounder, that the animal kingdom, including man, the head of it, is placed in circumstances, which, to say the least, might support a similar reasoning and conclusion. The consequence of life, in both, is an ultimate extinction of it; and by ways and means quite as undesirable to the animal, as those by which the tree of the forest, or the flower of the field, submits to its respective destiny and removal. By the animal, no less than by the vegetable kingdom, we behold, experienced in sad reality, or, in intelligible figure, the stroke of the axe, and the levelling of the scythe. They are either felled like the forest, or in the phrase of sacred authority and tender beauty, "cut down like a flower;" or "fade away," some by slow consuming malady, others by what, considered singly, seems more eligible, |