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ecrilluls UMBILICAL: VESSELS. 2

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nel, and is inferted near or into the corculum or heart of the feed,

where the living principle refides, and affords not only prefent nu- trition to the vece

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oily materials for its future nourifhment, which conftitute the cotyle-

etable embryon, but alfo fecretes the farinaceous or

dons of the feed. But the veffels, which may be properly called umbilical, pafs from the heart ot corculum of the feed, which is the living embryon of

“the future plant, into the feed-lobes, commonly called cotyledons, and

imbibe from thence a folution of the farinaceous or oily matter there depoñted for the nutriment of the new vesetable. Thefe veñlels are delineated in their magnified appearance by Dr. Grew, Plate LXXIX. fol. edition, and are by him termed feminal roots. See Plate I. Fig. 1.

Thefe umbilical vefels probably confift of a{yftem of abforbents, which fupply nutriment to the embryon plant from the cotyledons of the feed, and alfo of a fyftem of placental arteries and veins fpread on the humid membrane, which covers the cotyledons, and is moif- tened by its contact with the earth, for the purpofe of oxygenating the vegetable blood. This idea is countenanced by many plants bringing up their cotyledons, or feed-lobes, out of the ground into the air, which are then converted into leaves, and perform the office of lungs, after they have. given UP beneath the foil the nutriment, which they previoufly+ as in the young kidney-bean, pha- {colus; fo the white corol of the helleborus niger, chriftmas role, is changed into a green calyx by loofing one fyftem of arteries after the impregnation of the feeds.

The feed-embryon therefore refembles the chick in the ego, firit as when vivified by the influence of external w armtb they both beoin their growth by the abforbent fyftem of veffels being ftimulated into ation by their adapted nutriment; and the fluids thus pufhed for- wards ftimulate into action the other parts of the fyftem, conf ifting at firft principally of'arteries and glands.

Secondly, they feem to refemble each other in their pofleffing eacl of

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