Wel'ingtonia gigantea.

VEGETABLE. WORLD;

A HISTORY OF PLANTS,

WITH THEIR BOTANICAL DESCRIPTIONS AND PECULIAR

PROPERTIES.

BY LOUIS FIGUIER,,

AUTHOR OF “THE WORLD BEFORE THE DELUGE,” AND OTHER POPULAR WORKS.

“ILLUSTRATED WITH 446 ENGRAVINGS, INTERSPERSED THROUGH THE

TEXT, AND 24 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS;

CHIEFLY DRAWN FROM NATURE

M. FAG UET,

ILLUSTRATOR TO THE BOTANICAL COURSE OF THE FACULTY OF SCIENCES

OF PARIS.

NEW YORK: :

D. APPLETON AND CO., 445, BROADWAY.

Missour! BOTANIGAL BWaevan Liseary

LONDON:

PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO.,

CITY ROAD.

PREFACE:

Tue present Volume may be considered as the second contribution which M. Figuier has made towards his Tableau de la Nature. The World before-the Deluge” contemplatesa period in the earth’s history when its natural ornament was absent; when its surface was an arid desert—a vast solitude—the abode of silence and death. Plants preceded animals in the order of creation; when the great animals which preceded man were created by the wisdom of the Eternal, the earth was already clothed in a mantle of vegetation. We learn from Holy Scripture that ‘‘God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.” (Genesis i. 11, 12.)

Yes, it was good; for plants are at once the ornaments of the earth and the means of existence to the beings which occupy it; and this natural ornament the infinite goodness of the Creator has diversified in a wonderful manner, so that no part of the globe can be said to be deprived of it; and, as a natural consequence, plants have been the theme of great writers in all ages. Homer has sung their praise;Hesiod, Theocritus, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Claudius, among the Latins, have described them; and poets of all countries have been inspired by them. Infancy loves flowers,

PREFACE.by *

they are charming to the young, and in more advanced years we salute them for the remembrances they awaken—perhaps for graver reasons, for who can watch the annual return of the leaves and flowers and green herbage of spring without wonder and astonishment? Vegetation, considered in connection with the rest of animated creation, leads to the consideration of Gop the Creator. In contemplating the marvellous arrangements which rule the movements of life, in admiring the multiplied organs by means of which the vegetating functions are accomplished, the thoughtful mind necessarily rises from Nature to its Creator.

The History of Plants which is now submitted to the reader is divided into four parts:— I. The Organography and Physiology of Plants, saaneteniiae under these heads the description of the essential organs which » enter into the composition of vegetables, and some explanations of the various functions performed by means of these organs.

II. The Classification of Plants,—namely, the principles upon which the distribution of plants into particular groups rests; and along with this, brief sketches of the lives of the more eminent Botanists who have devoted themselves to this branch of the study of Plants. III. The Natural Families of Plants. In this section the Editor has departed from the original, being desirous of giving as complete a view of the Vegetable World as his limited space would permit, and according to the system of classification most received where the English language is spoken. While departing from his arrangement, however, the subjects which the Author had selected for more special illustration have been preserved. His idea was to make a selection of the more important families, describe a plant which was taken as a type of the order, and notice the most prominent species belonging to the group, with their properties; this idea has been adopted and considerably enlarged upon.

IV. Geographical Distribution of Plants on the surface of the globe—a frame-work which embraces the entire circle of studies which constitute the science of Botany.

With respect to the illustrations, we may mention that they are nearly all drawn from nature. Those which are connected with Cryptogams or Thallogens are borrowed from the original memoirs, which have appeared in the “ Annals des Sciences Naturalle.” M. Faguet has in these designs happily united the sentiment of the artist with the precision of the naturalist.

W.S. 0.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

Fig. 1.—Definite root-stock of the Iris.*

THE VEGETABLE WORLD.

——_ e————

ORGANOGRAPHY, OR THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS.

Commir a seed to the earth; plant, for example, a Haricot bean (Fig. 2) at the depth of two inches in moist vegetable soil, and if the temperature is between 15° and 20° R., the seed will not be slow to germinate, first swelling, and then bursting its outer skin, and

• Fig. 1 is an example of0 Rhizome, or underground stem or root-stock; a, the

rootlets d consist of thick adventitious fibres; e, young root fibres from e, which have just begun togerminate. This kind of root is saidtobe de extent iis limited;compound, because it pee of separate branches.

by this admirable arrangement of nature permitting us to contemplate the wonderful results, but without as yet enabling us to the strange mystery. comprehend the coun- A vegetable in miniature, terpart of the first, will, after a time, slowly reveal itself to the observer; in the mean time two parts,

Fig. 2.—Haricot bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). very distinct, make their appearance: one, yellowish in colour, already throwing out slender fibrous shoots, sinks farther into the soil—this is the racine radicle or root; the other, of a pale greenish colour, takes the ascends to the surface, and rises above the opposite direction, ground—this is the stem. Let us consider at first, in a general manner, this root and stem, with their functions. They are the essential organs of vegetation, without which, when we have excepted certain vegetables of an inferior order, plants, decorated with leaves and flowers, cannot a exist.

1. Tue Root.

The design of the Creator of the world seems to have been to embellish and make beautiful all which was to be exposed to our eyes, while that which was to be hidden was left destitute of grace or beauty. Leaves suspended from their branches balance themselves gracefully in the breathing air; the stems, branches, and flowers ctu are the ornament’of the landscape,

Fig. 3.—Haricot bean germinating. and satisfy the eye with their beauty; but the root is without colours or brilliancy, and is usually of a dull uniform brown, and performs in obscurity functions as important as those of stem, branches, leaves, or flowers. Yet how vast the difference between the verdant top of a tree, which rises graceful and elegant into middle air—not to speak of the flower it bears: and the coarse mass of its roots, divided into tortuous _ branches, without harmony, without symmetry, and forming a

tangled, disordered mass! These organs, so little favoured in their appearance, have, however, very important functions in the order of vegetable action. The general form of roots is conical, the thicker part being termed the caudex or stock; the tender and delicate point of the cone, from its soft yielding substance, the spongiola;the thread-like filaments it throws out in all directions are the febrilla, which is somewhat inflated, and consists of a series of small cells, the ducts of which convey the food of the plant from the spongiolles to the caudex of the root. Besides this function, it is now pretty well established that the spongiolles possess the power of ejecting effete or deleterious matter, and on this property of plants cultivators of the soil formed the system of rotation cropping; that which, in course of = time, renders the soil unfit for one crop until * it is renovated, being ~ harmless, if not beneficial, to others.

But all roots are not “=

planted in the soil. Fig. 4.—Young Harivot. There are some plants which take root in water, as the Duck-weed (Lemna), Fig. 5, which never touches the earth. Others nourish themselves on the tissues of other plants, as the Misletoe, a singular parasitic plant, which — B 2

forms tufts or branches of a delicate pale green, attaching itself to apple-trees, poplars, and a number of other trees. Some roots appear, moreover, to have no other function than to fix the plants to the soil: they seem to contribute nothing to their nourishment. In the Museum of Natural History of Paris, there has been for some years a magnificent Peruvian cactus, of an extraordinary © height, which has been growing vigorously, throwing out enormous branches with great rapidity. Its roots are shut up in a box of forty inches square, filled with earth, which has never been renewed and never watered. It is therefore evident that in this case the roots have little to do with the nourishment of the plant. Other instances confirm these inferences. ‘ In this country, where six months passes without a drop of rain falling,” says Auguste de St. Hilaire, “I have seen, during the dry season, cactuses covered with flowers, maintaining themselves on the burning rocks by the aid of a few weak slender roots, which sink into the dried-up humus which has found its way into the narrow clefts of the rock.” Nevertheless, most plants are — big. 5.—Duck-weed (Lemna). nourished, to a large extent, through their roots. Other plants, as the Screw-pine (pandanus), and the Mangrove-tree (r/izophora, root-bearer, from its habit of emitting roots from the stem, which descend until they reach the ground, when they bury themselves in the soil),—these are sometimes called—not very correctly however—aerial roots.