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For the numerous circumstances in which vegetable buds are analogous to animals, the reader is referred to the additional notes at the end of the Botanic Garden, Part I. It is there shewn, that the roots of vegetables resemble the lacteal system of animals; the sap-vessels in the early spring, before their leaves expand, are analogous to the placental vessels of the foetus; that the leaves of land-plants resemble lungs, and those of aquatic plants the gills of fish; that there are other systems of vessels resembling the vena portarum of quadrupeds, or the aorta of fish; that the digestive power of vegetables is similar to that of animals converting the fluids, which they absorb, into sugar; that their seeds resemble the eggs of animals, and their buds and bulbs their viviparous offspring.
If, following Goethe's method, we re-create in our mind the repeated separations and reunions of the sap-vessels, while keeping in view the fact that the leaf's outer form is the result of a purposive, many times repeated anastomosis, then the picture of the activity of weaving arises before our mind's eye.
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