FOOTNOTES:
[1] I have in this and every other instance translated the French word tissu by the English word texture. I know many writers have adopted the French term, but I think it unnecessary, to say the least, to employ a foreign word, when one of our own language can be used with quite as much precision. Tr.
[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.
[3] There are no words in English that correspond exactly to the words racornir, and racornissement, and I have therefore been compelled to employ the terms, to harden like horn, and horny hardening, to express the precise meaning. Tr.
[4] In a subsequent part of this work, the author defines appareil, which I have translated by the word apparatus, to be an assemblage of many systems. It will be perceived that the English word in this and some other instances is in the plural number. I should certainly have preferred some other term more conformable to the idiom of our own language if I had known any one that would so well have conveyed the sense of the author. Tr.
[5] The word paraphrenitis is meant probably to designate the inflammation of the meninges of the brain, though this term is not usually employed by English writers; but the word used by the author might be translated inflammation of the diaphragm, which certainly is not his meaning. Tr.
[6] It may be remarked, that this work was published at a time when the theory of the oxygenation of the blood was universally considered as explaining in a satisfactory manner the change that is effected in the colour of the blood by the lungs. The experiments of Allen, Pepys, and others, and the Treatises of Ellis, have proved to the satisfaction of most physiologists of the present day, that this change in the colour is not owing to the absorption of oxygen by the blood, but to the extrication of carbon from it. Tr.