But though I could not with my Microscope, nor with my breath, nor any other way I have yet try’d, discover a passage out of one of those cavities into another, yet I cannot thence conclude, that therefore there are none such, by which the Succus nutritius, or appropriate juices of Vegetables, may pass through them; for, in several of those Vegetables, whil’st green, I have with my Microscope, plainly enough discover’d these Cells or Poles fill’d with juices, and by degrees sweating them out; as I have also observed in green Wood all those long Microscopical pores which appear in Charcoal perfectly empty of any thing but Air.

Now, though I have with great diligence endeavoured to find whether there be any such thing in those Microscopical pores of Wood or Piths, as the Valves in the heart, veins, and other passages of Animals, that open and give passage to the contain’d fluid juices one way, and shut themselves, and impede the passage of such liquors back again, yet have I not hitherto been able to say any thing positive in it; though, me thinks, it seems very probable, that Nature has in these passages, as well as in those of Animal bodies, very many appropriated Instruments and contrivances, whereby to bring her designs and end to pass, which ’tis not improbable, but that some diligent Observer, if help’d with better Microscopes, may in time detect.

And that this may be so, seems with great probability to be argued from the strange Phaenomena of sensitive Plants, wherein Nature seems to perform several Animal actions with the same Schematism or Orginization that is common to all Vegetables, as may appear by some no less instructive then curious Observations that were made by divers Eminent Members of the Royal Society on some of these kind of Plants, whereof an account was delivered in to them by the most Ingenious and Excellent Physician, Doctor Clark, which, having that liberty granted me by that most Illustrious Society, I have hereunto adjoyn’d.

Observations on the Humble_ and Sensible Plants in M Chiffin’s Garden in Saint James’s Park, made August the 9th, 1661._ Present, the Lord Brouncker, Sr. Robert Moray, Dr. Wilkins, Mr. Evelin, Dr. Henshaw, and Dr. Clark.

There are four Plants, two of which are little shrub Plants, with a little short stock, about an Inch above the ground, from whence are spread several sticky branches, round, streight, and smooth in the distances between the Sprouts, but just under the Sprouts there are two sharp thorny prickles, broad in the letting on, as in the Bramble, one just under the Sprout, the other on the opposite side of the branch.

[14]The distances betwixt the Sprouts are usually something more then an Inch, and many upon a Branch, according to its length, and they grew