The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of VegetationDarwin, Erasmus
History
The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation
Darwin, Erasmus
Natural history; Plants -- Poetry; Portland Vase
A tree is a swarm of individual plants; vegetables are either oviparous
or viviparous; are all annual productions like many kinds of insects?
Hybernacula, a new bark annually produced over the old one in trees and
in some herbaceous plants, whence their roots seem end-bitten; all
bulbous roots perish annually; experiment on a tulip-root; both the
leaf-bulbs and the flower-bulbs are annually renewed.
NOTE XV ... SOLAR VOLCANOS.
The spots in the sun are cavities, some of them four thousand miles deep
and many times as broad; internal parts of the sun are not in a state of
combustion; volcanos visible in the sun; all the planets together are
less than one six hundred and fiftieth part of the sun; planets were
ejected from the sun by volcanos; many reasons shewing the probability
of this hypothesis; Mr. Buffon's hypothesis that planets were struck off
from the sun by comets; why no new planets are ejected from the sun;
some comets and the georgium sidus may be of later date; Sun's matter
decreased; Mr. Ludlam's opinion, that it is possible the moon might be
projected from the earth.
NOTE XVI ... CALCAREOUS EARTH.
High mountains and deep mines replete with shells; the earth's nucleus
covered with limestone; animals convert water into limestone; all the
calcareous earth in the world formed in animal and vegetable bodies;
solid parts of the earth increase; the water decreases; tops of
calcareous mountains dissolved; whence spar, marbles, chalk,
stalactites; whence alabaster, fluor, flint, granulated limestone, from
solution of their angles, and by attrition; tupha deposited on moss;
limestones from shells with animals in them; liver-stone from fresh-
water muscles; calcareous earth from land-animals and vegetables, as
marl; beds of marble softened by fire; whence Bath-stone contains lime
as well as limestone.
NOTE XVII ... MORASSES.
The production of morasses from fallen woods; account by the Earl
Cromartie of a new morass; morasses lose their salts by solution in
water; then their iron; their vegetable acid is converted into marine,
nitrous, and vitriolic acids; whence gypsum, alum, sulphur; into fluor-
acid, whence fluor; into siliceous acid, whence flint, the sand of the
sea, and other strata of siliceous sand and marl; some morasses ferment
like new hay, and, subliming their phlogistic part, form coal-beds above
and clay below, which are also produced by elutriation; shell-fish in
some morasses, hence shells sometimes found on coals and over iron-
stone.
NOTE XVIII ... IRON
Calciform ores; combustion of iron in vital air; steel from deprivation
of vital air; welding; hardness; brittleness like Rupert's drops;
specific levity; hardness and brittleness compared; steel tempered by
its colours; modern production of iron, manganese, calamy; septaria of
iron-stone ejected from volcanos; red-hot cannon balls.
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