[2] Several plants certainly possess a considerable degree of sensible organic contractility; the mimosa pudica (sensitive plant) is a well known example, though there are several others that enjoy this property to almost as great an extent; particularly the hedysarum gyrans, the oxalis sensitiva, and the berberis vulgaris. "A very remarkable degree of irritability, not exceeded by the sensitive plant, exists in the flowers of the barberry, (berberis vulgaris.) When these are fully expanded, the stamens are found spread out on the inside of the corolla. In this situation, if the inside of the filament be touched with a pin or straw, it instantly contracts and throws the anther violently against the stigma. This fact, which has been particularly described by Dr. Smith, in the English barberry, is not less remarkable and distinct in the American varieties of the shrub." Bigelow's Florula Bostoniensis. _Tr._ Man and the neighbouring species, which are the particular object of our researches, enjoy then evidently, all the vital properties, some of which belong to organic life, the others to animal life. 1st. Organic sensibility and insensible contractility have all the phenomena of the capillary circulation, of secretion, of absorption, exhalation, nutrition, &c. evidently dependant upon them in a state of health. In treating, therefore, of these functions, we must always ascend to these properties. In the state of disease, all the phenomena that suppose a disorder in these functions, are clearly derived from an injury of these properties. Inflammation, formation of pus, induration, resolution, hemorrhage, unnatural augmentation or suppression of secretions; increased exhalation, as in dropsies; diminished, or wholly wanting, as in adhesions; absorption, disordered in some way or other; nutrition, altered more or less, or presenting unnatural phenomena, as in the formation of tumours, cysts, cicatrices, &c.: these are morbid symptoms, that evidently suppose some injury or disorder in these two preceding properties. 2d. Sensible organic contractility, which, like the preceding, is not separated from the sensibility of the same nature, governs especially in a state of health, the movements necessary to digestion and the circulation of the great vessels, at least for the red and black blood of the general system, for the excretion of urine, &c. In the state of disease, all the phenomena of vomiting, of diarrhœas, and a great part of those numberless ones of the pulse, may ultimately be referred to a disorder of the sensible organic contractility. 3d. All the external sensations, those of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling, and the internal, as those of hunger, thirst, &c. are derived in a state of health from the animal sensibility. In disease, what part does not this property perform? Pain and its innumerable modifications, itching, smarting, tickling, the sensation of heaviness, weight, lassitude, throbbing,