The Botanic Garden

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From this outline a philosopher may catch a glimpse of the general
economy of nature; and like the mariner cast upon an unknown shore, who
rejoiced when he saw the print of a human foot upon the sand, he may cry
out with rapture, "A GOD DWELLS HERE."

CONTENTS

OF THE

ADDITIONAL NOTES.

NOTE I ... METEORS.

There are four strata of the atmosphere, and four kinds of meteors. 1.
Lightning is electric, exists in visible clouds, its short course, and
red light. 2. Shooting stars exist in invisible vapour, without sound,
white light, have no luminous trains. 3. Twilight; fire-balls move
thirty miles in a second, and are about sixty miles high, have luminous
trains, occasioned by an electric spark passing between the aerial and
inflammable strata of the atmosphere, and mixing them and setting them
on fire in its passage; attracted by volcanic eruptions; one thousand
miles through such a medium resists less than the tenth of an inch of
glass. 4. Northern lights not attracted to a point but diffused; their
colours; passage of electric fire in vacuo dubious; Dr. Franklin's
theory of northern lights countenanced in part by the supposition of
a superior atmosphere of inflammable air; antiquity of their appearance;
described in Maccabees.

NOTE II ... PRIMARY COLOURS.

The rainbow was in part understood before Sir Isaac Newton; the seven
colours were discovered by him; Mr. Gallon's experiments on colours;
manganese and lead produce colourless glass.

NOTE III ... COLOURED CLOUDS.

The rays refracted by the convexity of the atmosphere; the particles of
air and of water are blue; shadow by means of a candle in the day; halo
round the moon in a fog; bright spot in the cornea of the eye; light
from cat's eyes in the dark, from a horse's eyes in a cavern, coloured
by the choroid coat within the eye.

NOTE IV ... COMETS.

Tails of comets from rarified vapour, like northern lights, from
electricity; twenty millions of miles long; expected comet.

NOTE V ... SUN'S RAYS.

Dispute about phlogiston; the sun the fountain from whence all
phlogiston is derived; its rays not luminous till they arrive at our
atmosphere; light owing to their combustion with air, whence an unknown
acid; the sun is on fire only on its surface; the dark spots on it are
excavations through its luminous crust.

NOTE VI ... CENTRAL FIRES.

Sun's heat much less than that from the fire at the earth's centre;
sun's heat penetrates but a few feet in summer; some mines are warm;
warm springs owing to subterraneous fire; situations of volcanos on high
mountains; original nucleus of the earth; deep vallies of the ocean;
distant perception of earthquakes; great attraction of mountains;
variation of the compass; countenance the existence of a cavity or fluid
lava within the earth.

NOTE VII ... ELEMENTARY HEAT.

Combined and sensible heat; chemical combinations attract heat,
solutions reject heat; ice cools boiling water six times as much as cold
water cools it; cold produced by evaporation; heat by devaporation;
capacities of bodies in respect to heat, 1. Existence of the matter of
heat shewn from the mechanical condensation and rarefaction of air, from
the steam produced in exhausting a receiver, snow from rarefied air,
cold from discharging an air-gun, heat from vibration or friction; 2.
Matter of heat analogous to the electric fluid in many circumstances,
explains many chemical phenomena.

NOTE VIII ... MEMNON'S LYRE.

Mechanical impulse of light dubious; a glass tube laid horizontally
before a fire revolves; pulse-glass suspended on a centre; black leather
contracts in the sunshine; Memnon's statue broken by Cambyses.

NOTE IX ... LUMINOUS INSECTS.

Eighteen species of glow-worm, their light owing to their respiration in
transparent lungs; Acudia of Surinam gives light enough to read and draw
by, use of its light to the insect; luminous sea-insects adhere to the
skin of those who bathe in the ports of Languedoc, the light may arise
from putrescent slime.

NOTE X ... PHOSPHORUS.

Discovered by Kunkel, Brandt, and Boyle; produced in respiration, and by
luminous insects, decayed wood, and calcined shells; bleaching a slow
combustion in which the water is decomposed; rancidity of animal fat
owing to the decomposition of water on its surface; aerated marine acid
does not whiten or bleach the hand.

NOTE XI ... STEAM-ENGINE.

Hero of Alexandria first applied steam to machinery, next a French
writer in 1630, the Marquis of Worcester in 1655, Capt. Savery in 1689,
Newcomen and Cawley added the piston; the improvements of Watt and
Boulton; power of one of their large engines equal to two hundred
horses.

NOTE XII ... FROST.

Expansion of water in freezing; injury done by vernal frosts; fish,
eggs, seeds, resist congelation; animals do not resist the increase of
heat; frosts do not meliorate the ground, nor are in general salubrious;
damp air produces cold on the skin by evaporation; snow less pernicious
to agriculture than heavy rains for two reasons.

NOTE XIII ... ELECTRICITY.

1. _Points_ preferable to knobs for defence of buildings; why points
emit the electric fluid; diffusion of oil on water; mountains are points
on the earth's globe; do they produce ascending currents of air? 2.
_Fairy-rings_ explained; advantage of paring and burning ground.

NOTE XIV ... BUDS AND BULBS.

A tree is a swarm of individual plants; vegetables are either oviparous
or viviparous; are all annual productions like many kinds of insects?
Hybernacula, a new bark annually produced over the old one in trees and
in some herbaceous plants, whence their roots seem end-bitten; all
bulbous roots perish annually; experiment on a tulip-root; both the
leaf-bulbs and the flower-bulbs are annually renewed.

NOTE XV ... SOLAR VOLCANOS.

The spots in the sun are cavities, some of them four thousand miles deep
and many times as broad; internal parts of the sun are not in a state of
combustion; volcanos visible in the sun; all the planets together are
less than one six hundred and fiftieth part of the sun; planets were
ejected from the sun by volcanos; many reasons shewing the probability
of this hypothesis; Mr. Buffon's hypothesis that planets were struck off
from the sun by comets; why no new planets are ejected from the sun;
some comets and the georgium sidus may be of later date; Sun's matter
decreased; Mr. Ludlam's opinion, that it is possible the moon might be
projected from the earth.

NOTE XVI ... CALCAREOUS EARTH.

High mountains and deep mines replete with shells; the earth's nucleus
covered with limestone; animals convert water into limestone; all the
calcareous earth in the world formed in animal and vegetable bodies;
solid parts of the earth increase; the water decreases; tops of
calcareous mountains dissolved; whence spar, marbles, chalk,
stalactites; whence alabaster, fluor, flint, granulated limestone, from
solution of their angles, and by attrition; tupha deposited on moss;
limestones from shells with animals in them; liver-stone from fresh-
water muscles; calcareous earth from land-animals and vegetables, as
marl; beds of marble softened by fire; whence Bath-stone contains lime
as well as limestone.

NOTE XVII ... MORASSES.

The production of morasses from fallen woods; account by the Earl
Cromartie of a new morass; morasses lose their salts by solution in
water; then their iron; their vegetable acid is converted into marine,
nitrous, and vitriolic acids; whence gypsum, alum, sulphur; into fluor-
acid, whence fluor; into siliceous acid, whence flint, the sand of the
sea, and other strata of siliceous sand and marl; some morasses ferment
like new hay, and, subliming their phlogistic part, form coal-beds above
and clay below, which are also produced by elutriation; shell-fish in
some morasses, hence shells sometimes found on coals and over iron-
stone.

NOTE XVIII ... IRON

Calciform ores; combustion of iron in vital air; steel from deprivation
of vital air; welding; hardness; brittleness like Rupert's drops;
specific levity; hardness and brittleness compared; steel tempered by
its colours; modern production of iron, manganese, calamy; septaria of
iron-stone ejected from volcanos; red-hot cannon balls.

NOTE XIX ... FLINT.

1. _Siliceous rocks_ from morasses; their cements. 2. _Siliceous trees_;
coloured by iron or manganese; Peak-diamonds; Bristol-stones; flint in
form of calcareous spar; has been fluid without much heat; obtained from
powdered quartz and fluor-acid by Bergman and by Achard. 3. _Agates and
onyxes_ found in sand-rocks; of vegetable origin; have been in complete
fusion; their concentric coloured circles not from superinduction but
from congelation; experiment of freezing a solution of blue vitriol;
iron and manganese repelled in spheres as the nodule of flint cooled;
circular stains of marl in salt-mines; some flint nodules resemble knots
of wood or roots. 4. _Sand of the sea_; its acid from morasses; its base
from shells. 5. _Chert or petrosilex_ stratified in cooling; their
colour and their acid from sea-animals; labradore-stone from mother-
pearl. 6. _Flints in chalk-beds_; their form, colour, and acid, from the
flesh of sea-animals; some are hollow and lined with crystals; contain
iron; not produced by injection from without; coralloids converted to
flint; French-millstones; flints sometimes found in solid strata. 7.
_Angles of sand_ destroyed by attrition and solution in steam; siliceous
breccia cemented by solution in red-hot water. 8. _Basaltes and
granites_ are antient lavas; basaltes raised by its congelation not by
subterraneous fire.

NOTE XX ... CLAY.

Fire and water two great agents; stratification from precipitation; many
stratified materials not soluble in water. 1. Stratification of lava
from successive accumulation. 2. Stratifications of limestone from the
different periods of time in which the shells were deposited. 3.
Stratifications of coal, and clay, and sandstone, and iron-ores, not
from currents of water, but from the production of morass-beds at
different periods of time; morass-beds become ignited; their bitumen and
sulphur is sublimed; the clay, lime, and iron remain; whence sand,
marle, coal, white clay in valleys, and gravel-beds, and some ochres,
and some calcareous depositions owing to alluviation; clay from
decomposed granite; from the lava of Vesuvius; from vitreous lavas.

NOTE XXI ... ENAMELS.

Rose-colour and purple from gold; precipitates of gold by alcaline salt
preferable to those by tin; aurum fulminans long ground; tender colours
from gold or iron not dissolved but suspended in the glass; cobalts;
calces of cobalt and copper require a strong fire; Ka-o-lin and
Pe-tun-tse the same as our own materials.

NOTE XXII ... PORTLAND VASE.

Its figures do not allude to private history; they represent a part of
the Elusinian mysteries; marriage of Cupid and Psyche; procession of
torches; the figures in one compartment represent MORTAL LIFE in the act
of expiring, and HUMANKIND attending to her with concern; Adam and Eve
hyeroglyphic figures; Abel and Cain other hyeroglyphic figures; on the
other compartment is represented IMMORTAL LIFE, the Manes or Ghost
descending into Elisium is led on by DIVINE LOVE, and received by
IMMORTAL LIFE, and conducted to Pluto; Tree of Life and Knowledge are
emblematical; the figure at the bottom is of Atis, the first great
Hierophant, or teacher of mysteries.

NOTE XXIII ... COAL.

1. A fountain of fossile tar in Shropshire; has been distilled from the
coal-beds beneath, and condensed in the cavities of a sand-rock; the
coal beneath is deprived of its bitumen in part; bitumen sublimed at
Matlock into cavities lined with spar. 2. Coal has been exposed to heat;
woody fibres and vegetable seeds in coal at Bovey and Polesworth; upper
part of coal-beds more bituminous at Beaudesert; thin stratum of
asphaltum near Caulk; upper part of coal-bed worse at Alfreton; upper
stratum of no value at Widdrington; alum at West-Hallum; at Bilston. 3.
Coal at Coalbrooke-Dale has been immersed in the sea, shewn by sea-
shells; marks of violence in the colliery at Mendip and at Ticknal;
Lead-ore and spar in coal-beds; gravel over coal near Lichfield; Coal
produced from morasses shewn by fern-leaves, and bog-shells, and muscle-
shells; by some parts of coal being still woody; from Lock Neagh and
Bovey, and the Temple of the devil; fixed alcali; oil.

NOTE XXIV ... GRANITE.

Granite the lowest stratum of the earth yet known; porphory, trap, Moor-
stone, Whin-stone, slate, basaltes, all volcanic productions dissolved
in red-hot water; volcanos in granite strata; differ from the heat of
morasses from fermentation; the nucleus of the earth ejected from the
sun? was the sun originally a planet? supposed section of the globe.

NOTE XXV ... EVAPORATION.

I. Solution of water in air; in the matter of heat; pulse-glass. 2. Heat
is the principal cause of evaporation; thermometer cooled by evaporation
of ether; heat given from steam to the worm-tub; warmth accompanying
rain. 3. Steam condensed on the eduction of heat; moisture on cold
walls; south-west and north-east winds. 4. Solution of salt and of blue
vitriol in the matter of heat. II. Other vapours may precipitate steam
and form rain. 1. Cold the principal cause of devaporation; hence the
steam dissolved in heat is precipitated, but that dissolved in air
remains even in frosts; south-west wind. 2. North-east winds mixing with
south-west winds produce rain; because the cold particles of air of the
north-east acquire some of the matter of heat from the south-west winds.
3. Devaporation from mechanical expansion of air, as in the receiver of
an air-pump; summer-clouds appear and vanish; when the barometers sink
without change of wind the weather becomes colder. 4. Solution of water
in electric fluid dubious. 5. Barometer sinks from the lessened gravity
of the air, and from the rain having less pressure as it falls; a
mixture of a solution of water in calorique with an aerial solution of
water is lighter than dry air; breath of animals in cold weather why
condensed into visible vapour and dissolved again.

NOTE XXVI ... SPRINGS.

Lowest strata of the earth appear on the highest hills; springs from
dews sliding between them; mountains are colder than plains; 1. from
their being insulated in the air; 2. from their enlarged surface; 3.
from the rarety of the air it becomes a better conductor of heat; 4. by
the air on mountains being mechanically rarefied as it ascends; 5.
gravitation of the matter of heat; 6. the dashing of clouds against
hills; of fogs against trees; springs stronger in hot days with cold
nights; streams from subterranean caverns; from beneath the snow on the
Alps.

NOTE XXVII ... SHELL-FISH.

The armour of the Echinus moveable; holds itself in storms to stones by
1200 or 2000 strings: Nautilus rows and sails; renders its shell
buoyant: Pinna and Cancer; Byssus of the antients was the beard of the
Pinna; as fine as the silk is spun by the silk-worm; gloves made of it;
the beard of muscles produces sickness; Indian weed; tendons of rats
tails.

NOTE XXVIII ... STURGEON.

Sturgeon's mouth like a purse; without teeth; tendrils like worms hang
before his lips, which entice small fish and sea-insects mistaking them
for worms; his skin used for covering carriages; isinglass made from it;
cavear from the spawn.

NOTE XXIX ... OIL ON WATER.

Oil and water do not touch; a second drop of oil will not diffuse itself
on the preceeding one; hence it stills the waves; divers for pearl carry
oil in their mouths; oil on water produces prismatic colours; oiled cork
circulates on water; a phial of oil and water made to oscillate.

NOTE XXX ... SHIP-WORM.

The Teredo has calcareous jaws; a new enemy; they perish when they meet
together in their ligneous canals; United Provinces alarmed for the
piles of the banks of Zeland; were destroyed by a severe winter.

NOTE XXXI ... MAELSTROM.

A whirlpool on the coast of Norway; passes through a subterraneous
cavity; less violent when the tide is up; eddies become hollow in the
middle; heavy bodies are thrown out by eddies; light ones retained; oil
and water whirled in a phial; hurricanes explained.

NOTE XXXII ... GLACIERS.

Snow in contact with the earth is in a state of thaw; ice-houses; rivers
from beneath the snow; rime in spring vanishes by its contact with the
earth; and snow by its evaporation and contact with the earth; moss
vegetates beneath the snow; and Alpine plants perish at Upsal for want
of show.

NOTE XXXIII ... WINDS.

Air is perpetually subject to increase and to diminution; Oxygene is
perpetually produced from vegetables in the sunshine, and from clouds in
the light, and from water; Azote is perpetually produced from animal and
vegetable putrefaction, or combustion; from springs of water; volatile
alcali; fixed alcali; sea-water; they are both perpetually diminished by
their contact with the soil, producing nitre; Oxygene is diminished in
the production of all acids; Azote by the growth of animal bodies;
charcoal in burning consumes double its weight of pure air; every barrel
of red-lead absorbes 2000 cubic feet of vital air; air obtained from
variety of substances by Dr. Priestley; Officina aeris in the polar
circle, and at the Line. _South-west winds_; their westerly direction
from the less velocity of the earth's surface; the contrary in respect
to north-east winds; South-west winds consist of regions of air from the
south; and north-east winds of regions of air from the north; when the
south-west prevails for weeks and the barometer sinks to 28, what
becomes of above one fifteenth part of the atmosphere; 1. It is not
carried back by superior currents; 2. Not from its loss of moisture; 3.
Not carried over the pole; 4. Not owing to atmospheric tides or
mountains; 5. It is absorbed at the polar circle; hence south-west winds
and rain; south-west sometimes cold. _North-east winds_ consist of air
from the north; cold by the evaporation of ice; are dry winds; 1. Not
supplied by superior current; 2. The whole atmosphere increased in
quantity by air set at liberty from its combinations in the polar
circles. _South-east winds_ consist of north winds driven back. _North-
west winds_ consist of south-west winds driven back; north-west winds of
America bring frost; owing to a vertical spiral eddy of air between the
eastern coast and the Apalachian mountains; hence the greater cold of
North America. _Trade-winds_; air over the Line always hotter than at
the tropics; trade-winds gain their easterly direction from the greater
velocity of the earth's surface at the line; not supplied by superior
currents; supplied by decomposed water in the sun's great light; 1.
Because there are no constant rains in the tract of the trade-winds; 2.
Because there is no condensible vapour above three or four miles high at
the line. _Monsoons and tornadoes_; some places at the tropic become
warmer when the sun is vertical than at the line; hence the air ascends,
supplied on one side by the north-east winds, and on the other by the
south-west; whence an ascending eddy or tornado, raising water from the
sea, or sand from the desert, and incessant rains; air diminished to the
northward produces south-west winds; tornadoes from heavier air above
sinking through lighter air below, which rises through a perforation;
hence trees are thrown down in a narrow line of twenty or forty yards
broad, the sea rises like a cone, with great rain and lightning. _Land
and sea breezes_; sea less heated than land; tropical islands more
heated in the day than the sea, and are cooled more in the night.
_Conclusion_; irregular winds from other causes; only two original winds
north and south; different sounds of north-east and south-west winds; a
Bear or Dragon in the arctic circle that swallows at times and
disembogues again above one fifteenth part of the atmosphere; wind-
instruments; recapitulation.

NOTE XXXIV ... VEGETABLE PERSPIRATION.

Pure air from Dr. Priestley's vegetable matter, and from vegetable
leaves, owing to decomposition of water; the hydrogene retained by the
vegetables; plants in the shade are _tanned_ green by the sun's light;
animal skins are _tanned_ yellow by the retention of hydrogene; much
pure air from dew on a sunny morning; bleaching why sooner performed on
cotton than linen; bees wax bleached; metals calcined by decomposition
of water; oil bleached in the light becomes yellow again in the dark;
nitrous acid coloured by being exposed to the sun; vegetables perspire
more than animals, hence in the sun-shine they purify air more by their
perspiration than they injure it by their respiration; they grow fastest
in their sleep.

NOTE XXXV ... VEGETABLE PLACENTATION.

Buds the viviparous offspring of vegetables; placentation in bulbs and
seeds; placentation of buds in the roots, hence the rising of sap in the
spring, as in vines, birch, which ceases as soon as the leaves expand;
production of the leaf of Horse-chesnut, and of its new bud; oil of
vitriol on the bud of Mimosa killed the leaf also; placentation shewn
from the sweetness of the sap; no umbilical artery in vegetables.

NOTE XXXVI ... VEGETABLE CIRCULATION.

Buds set in the ground will grow if prevented from bleeding to death by
a cement; vegetables require no muscles of locomotion, no stomach or
bowels, no general system of veins; they have, 1. Three systems of
absorbent vessels; 2. Two pulmonary systems; 3. Arterial systems; 4.
Glands; 5. Organs of reproduction; 6. muscles. I. Absorbent system
evinced by experiments by coloured absorptions in fig-tree and picris;
called air-vessels erroneously; spiral structure of absorbent vessels;
retrograde motion of them like the throats of cows. II. Pulmonary
arteries in the leaves, and pulmonary veins; no general system of veins
shewn by experiment; no heart; the arteries act like the vena portarum
of the liver; pulmonary system in the petals of flowers; circulation
owing to living irritability; vegetable absorption more powerful than
animal, as in vines; not by capillary attraction.

NOTE XXXVII ... VEGETABLE RESPIRATION.

I. Leaves not perspiratory organs, nor excretory ones; lungs of animals.
1. Great surfaces of leaves. 2. Vegetable blood changes colour in the
leaves; experiment with spurge; with picris. 3. Upper surface of the
leaf only acts as a respiratory organ. 4. Upper surface repels moisture;
leaves laid on water. 5. Leaves killed by oil like insects; muscles at
the foot-stalks of leaves. 6. Use of light to vegetable leaves;
experiments of Priestley, Ingenhouze, and Scheel. 7. Vegetable
circulation similar to that of fish. II. Another pulmonary system
belongs to flowers; colours of flowers. 1. Vascular structure of the
corol. 2. Glands producing honey, wax, &c. perish with the corol. 3.
Many flowers have no green leaves attending them, as Colchicum. 4.
Corols not for the defence of the stamens. 5. Corol of Helleborus Niger
changes to a calyx. 6. Green leaves not necessary to the fruit-bud;
green leaves of Colchicum belong to the new bulb not to the flower. 7.
Flower-bud after the corol falls is simply an uterus; mature flowers not
injured by taking of the green leaves. 8. Inosculation of vegetable
vessels.

NOTE XXXVIII ... VEGETABLE IMPREGNATION.

Seeds in broom discovered twenty days before the flower opens; progress
of the seed after impregnation; seeds exist before fecundation; analogy
between seeds and eggs; progress of the egg within the hen; spawn of
frogs and of fish; male Salamander; marine plants project a liquor not a
powder; seminal fluid diluted with water, if a stimulus only? Male and
female influence necessary in animals, insects, and vegetables, both in
production of seeds and buds; does the embryon seed produce the
surrounding fruit, like insects in gall-nuts?

NOTE XXXIX ... VEGETABLE GLANDULATION.

Vegetable glands cannot be injected with coloured fluids; essential oil;
wax; honey; nectary, its complicate apparatus; exposes the honey to the
air like the lacrymal gland; honey is nutritious; the male and female
parts of flowers copulate and die like moths and butterflies, and are
fed like them with honey; anthers supposed to become insects;
depredation of the honey and wax injurious to plants; honey-dew; honey
oxygenated by exposure to air; necessary for the production of
sensibility; the provision for the embryon plant of honey, sugar,
starch, &c. supplies food to numerous classes of animals; various
vegetable secretions as gum tragacanth, camphor, elemi, anime,
turpentine, balsam of Mecca, aloe, myrrh, elastic resin, manna, sugar,
wax, tallow, and many other concrete juices; vegetable digestion;
chemical production of sugar would multiply mankind; economy of nature.

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