Part 4 — NOTES TO PART IV.

How their seeds enter into the heart of a growing tree having no external rottenness, is not very obvious, unless they are inhaled or imbibed by the root tendrils: from the resemblance which the growth of some of them has to fermentation, it is not even very improbable that the animalcules of supposed molecular or inferior life, have, of themselves, a disposition to unite into some of these aggregates without the presence of any disposing germ.

The modifications of material attractions, by the varied germs of superior life—the fixity of some of these deposites after life is gone—the resolution of these into inferior animalcular, or even molecular, life—and the instrumentality of zoophytes of the lower order of organization, in hastening this decomposition by the balancing of the attractions of this secondary life, afford a wide field for investigation. Those uncouth sportings of nature quickly appear and disappear as material spectres, feeding on corruption, and mocking at primary life.