The Poetical Works of Erasmus Darwin ... Containing the Botanic Garden ... and the Temple of Nature. With philosophical notes and plates

Front matter

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ADVERTISEMENT.

. 1 HE general design of the following sheets is to insist Imagination under the banner of Science ; and to lead her vota ries from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter ones, which form the ratiocination of phi losophy. While their particular design is to induce the, ingenious to cultivate the knowledge of Botany, by introducing them to the vestibule of that delightful science, and recommending to their attention the immortal works of the celebrated Swedish Naturalist, Linnæus. In the first Poem, or Economy of Vege tation, the physiology of Plants is deliver ed ; and the operation of the Elements, as far as they may be supposed to effect the ) growth of Vegetables. In the second Poem, or Loves of the Plants, the Sexual System of Linnæus is explained, with the remarkable properties of many particular plants.

Canto I

c* STAY tour rude steps ! whose throbbing breasts infold The legion-fiends of Glory, or of Gold! Stay ! whose false lips seductive simpers part, While Cunning nestles in the harlot-heart !— * For you no Dryads dress the roseate bower, For you no Nymphs their sparkling vases pour ; Unmark'd by you, light Graces swim the green, And hovering Cupids aim their shafts, unseen. " But Thou ! whose mind the well-attemper'd ray Of Taste and Virtue lights with purer day ; IO Vol. I B L 2 Whose finer sense each soft vibration owns With sweet responsive sympathy of tones ; So the fair flower expands it's lucid form To meet the fun, and shuts it to the storm;— For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath, My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe ; Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye; On twinkling fins my pearly nations play, Or win with sinuous train their trackless way ; SO My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest, To Love's sweet notes attune the listening dell, And Echo sounds her soft symphonious shell.

" And, if with Thee some hapless Maid should stray, Disastrous Love companion of her way, So the fair flower. 1. 13. It seems to have been the original design of the philosophy of Epicurus to render the mind exquisite ly sensibly to agreeable sensations, and equally insensible to disagreeable ones. Disastrous Love. I. 26. The scenery is taken from a botanic ' garden about a mile from Lichfield, where a cold bath was erectid by Sir John Floyer. There is a grotto surrounded by Canto I. VEGETATION. 3 Oh, lead her timid steps to yonder glade, Whose arching cliffs depending alders shade ; There, as meek Evening wakes her temperate breeze, And moon-beams glimmer through the trembling trees, 30 The rills, that gurgle round, shall sooth her ear,- The weeping rocks shall number tear for tear ; There as fad Philomel, alike forlorn, Sings to the Night from her accustomed thorn ; While at sweet intervals each falling note Sighs in the gale, and whispers round the grot ; The sister-woe shall calm her aching breast, And softer slumbers steal her cares to rest. — " Winds of the North ! restrain your icy gales, Nor chill the bosom of these happy vales ! 40 Hence in dark heaps, ye gathering Clouds, revolve!

Disperse, ye Lightnings ! and, ye Mists, dissolve ! projecting rocks, from the edges of which trickles a perpetual shower of water ; and it is here represented as adapted to love scenes, as being thence a proper residence for the modern god dess of Botany, and the easier to introduce the next poem on the Loves of the Plants, according to the system of Linnæus. B I. 4 — Hither, emerging from yon orient skies, Botanic Goddess! bend thy radiant eyes; O'er these soft scenes assume thy gentle reign, Pomona, Ceres, Flora in thy train ; O'er the still dawn thy placid smile effuse, And with thy silver sandals print the dews ; In noon's bright blaze thy vermil vest unfold, And wave thy emerald banner starr'd with gold." 50 Thus spoke the Genius, as He stept along, And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong ; Down the steep slopes He led with modest skill The willing pathway, and the truant rill, Stretch'd o'er the marshy vale yon willowy mound, Where shines the lake amid the tufted ground, Raised the young woodland, smooth'd the wavy green, And gave to Beauty all the quiet scene. — She comes ! — the Goddess ! — through the whispering air, Bright as the morn, descends her blushing car; Canto L VEGETATION. 5 Each circling wheel a wreath of flowers intwlnes, And gem'd with flowers the silken harness shines; The golden bits with flowery studs are deck'd, And knots of flowers the crimson reins connect. — ■ And now on earth the silver axle rings, And the shell sinks upon its slender springs ; Light from her airy seat the Goddess bounds, And steps celestial press the pansied grounds.

Fair Spring advancing calls her feather'd quire, And tunes to softer notes her laughing lyre ; 70 Bids her gay hours on purple pinions move, And arms her Zephyrs with the shafts of Love, Pleased Gnomes, ascending from their earthy beds, Play round her graceful footsteps, as she treads ; Pleased Gnomes. 1. 73. The Rosicrucian doctrine of Gnomes, Sylphs, Nymphs, and Salamanders, affords proper machinery for a philosophic poem ; as it is probable that they were originally the names of hieroglyphic figures of the Elements, or of Genii presiding over their operations. The Fairies of more modern days seem to have been derived from them, and to have inherited their powers. The Gnomes and Sylphs, as being more nearly allied to modern Fairies, are represented as either male or female, which distinguishes the latter from the Aurae of the Latin Poets, which were only female ; except the winds, as Zephyrus and Auster, may be supposed to have been their husbands.

B Canto I. ECONOMY OF 6 Gay Sylphs attendant beat the fragrant air On winnowing wings, and waft her golden hair ; Blue Nymphs emerging leave their sparkling streams, And Fiery Forms alight from orient beams ; Musk'd in the rose's lap fresh dews they shed, Or breathe celestial lustres round her head. 80 First the fine forms her dulcet voice requires, Which bathe or bask in elemental fires ; From each bright gem of Day's refulgent car, From the pale sphere of every twinkling star, From each nice pore of ocean, earth, and air, With eye of flame the sparkling hosts repair, Mix their gay hues, in changeful circles play, Like motes, that tenant the meridian ray. — So the clear Lens collects with magic power The countless glories of the midnight hour ; oo Stars after stars with quivering lustre fall, And twinkling glide along the whiten'd wall. — Pleased, as they pass she counts the glittering bands, And stills their murmur with her waving hands ; Each listening tribe with fond expectance burns, And now to these, and now to those, she turns.

I. "Nymphs of primeval Fire! your vestal train Hung with gold-tresses o'er the vast inane, Nymphs of primeval fire. 1. 97. The fluid matter of heat is perhaps the most extensive element in nature j all other bodies are immersed in it, and are preserved in their present state of solidity or fluidity by the attraction of their particles to the matter of heat. Since all known bodies are contractible into less space by depriving them of some portion of their heat, and as there is no part of nature totally deprived of heat, there is reason to believe that the particles of bodies do not touch, but are held towards each other by their self-attraction, and recede from each other by their attraction to the mass of heat which surrounds them ; and thus exist in an equilibrium between these two powers.

If more of the matter of heat be applied to them, they recede farther from each other, and become fluid ; if still more be applied, they take an aerial form, and are termed Gases by the modern chemists. Thus when water is heated to a certain degree, it would instantly assume the form of steam, but for the pressure of the atmosphere, which prevents this change from taking place so easily ; the same is true of quicksilver, diamonds, and of perhaps all other bodies in Nature ; they would first become fluid, and then aerifonn by appropriate degrees of heat. On the contrary, this elastic matter of heat, termed Calorique in the new nomenclature of the French Academicians, is liable to become consolidated itself in its combinations with some bodies, as perhaps in nitre, and probably in combustible bodies as sulphur and charcoal.

See note on 1. 232 of this Canto. Mo^ dem philosophers have not yet been able to decide whether light and heat be different fluids, or modifications of the fame fluid, B Pierced with your silver shafts the throne of Night, And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light; ioo When Love Divine, with brooding wings unfurl'd, Call'd from the rude abyss the living world. as they have many properties in common. See note on 1. 468 of this Canto. When Love Divine. 1. 101. From having observed the gra dual evolution of the young animal or plant from its egg or feed ; and afterwards its successive advances to its more perfect state, or maturity; philosophers of all ages seem to have imagined, that the great world itself had likewise its infancy and its gradual progress to maturity ; this seems to have given origin to the very antient and sublime allegory of Eros, or Divine Love, producing the world from the egg of Night, as it floated in Chaos.

See 1. 419 of this Canto. The external crust of the earth, as far as it has been exposed to our view in mines or mountains, countenances this opinion : since these have evidently for the most part had their origin from the sliells of fishes, the decomposition of vegetables, and the recrements of other animal materials, and must therefore have been formed progressively from small beginnings. There are like wise some apparently useless or incomplete appendages to plants and animals, which seem to shew they have gradually undergone changes from their original state ; such as the stamens without •'Let there be light !' proclaim'd the Almighty Lord, Astonish'd Chaos heard the potent word ; Through all his realms the kindling Ether runs, And the mass starts into a million funs; anthers, and styles without stigmas of several plants, as mention ed in the note on Curcuma, Vol. II. of this work.

Such as the halteres, or rudiments of wings of some two-winged infects; and the paps of male animals ; thus swine have four toes, but two of them are imperfectly formed, and not long enough for use. The allantoide in some animals seems to have become extinct ; in others is above tenfold the size, which would seem necessary for its purpose. Buffon du Cochon. T. 6. p. 257. Perhaps all the supposed monstrous births of Nature are remains of their ha bits of production in their former less perfect state, or attempts towards greater perfection. Through all his realms. 1. 105. Mr. Hersehel has given a very sublime and curious account of the construction of the heavens with his discovery of some thousand nebulae, or clouds of stars ; many of which are much larger collections of stars, than all those put together, which are visible to our naked eyes, added to those which form the galaxy, or milky zone, which sur rounds us.

He observes that in the vicinity of these clusters of stars there are proportionally fewer stars than in other parts of the heavens, and hence he concludes, that they have attracted each other, on the supposition that infinite space was at first equally sprinkled with them ; as if it had at the beginning been filled with a fluid mass, which had coagulated. Mr. Hersehel Earths round each fun with quick explosions burst, And second planets issue from the first ; has further shewn, that the whole sidereal system is gradually moving round some centre, which may be an opake mass of maN ter, Philof. Trans. Vol. LXXIV. If all these Suns are mov ing round some great central body, they must have had a pro jectile force, as well as a centripetal one; and may thence be supposed to have emerged or been projected from the material, where they were produced.

We can have no idea of a natural power, which could project a Sun out of Chaos, except by com^ paring it to the explosions or earthquakes owing to the sudden evolution of aqueous or of other more elastic vapours ; of the power of which under immeasureable degrees of heat, and coith ptession, we are yet ignorant. It may be objected, that if the stars had been projected from a Chaos by explosions, they must have returned again into it from the known laws of gravitation; this however would not happen, if the whole of Chaos, like grains of gunpowder, was exploded at the fame time, and dispersed through infinite space at once, or in quick succession, in every possible direction. The same objection may be stated against the possibility of the planets having been thrown from the fun by explosions; and the se condary planets from the primary ones ; which will be spoken ot more at large in the second Canto: but if the planets are sup posed to have been projected from their suns, and the secondary from the primary ones, at the beginning of their course; they might be so influenced or diverted by the attiactions of the funs, or fun, in their vicinity, as to prevent their tendency to return into the body, from which they were projected.

If these innumerable and immense funs thus rising out of Bend, as they journey with projectile force, In bright ellipses their reluctant course ; no Orbs wheel in orbs, round centres centres roll, And form, self-balanced, one revolving Whole. — Onward they move amid their bright abode, Space without bound, the bosom of their God ! II. " Ethereal Powers ! you chase the shooting stars, Or yoke the vollied lightnings to your cars, Cling round the aerial bow with prisms bright, And pleas'd untwist the sevenfold threads of light; Chaos are supposed to have thrown out their attendant planets by n«w explosions, as they ascended; and those their respective satellites filling in a moment the immensity of space with light and motion, a grander idea cannot be conceived by the mind of man. Chase the floating stars. 1. 115.

The meteors called shooting stars, the lightning, the rainbow, and the clouds, are pheno mena of the lower regions of the atmosphere. The twilight, the meteors called fire-balls, or flying dragons, and the northern lights, inhabit the higher regions of the atmosphere. See ad ditional notes, No. I. Cling round the aerial bow, 1 . 1 1 7 . See additional notes, No. Eve's silken couch with gorgeous tints adorn, And fire the arrowy throne of rising Morn. 1 20 — Or, plum'd with flame, in gay battalions spring To brighter regions borne on broader wing; Where lighter gases, circumfused on high, Form the vast concave of exterior sky ; Eve's silken couch. 1. 119. See additional Notes, No. III. Where lighter gases. I. 123. Mr. Cavendish has shewn, that the gas called inflammable air, is at least ten times lighter than common air; Mr. Lavoisier contends, that it is one of the com ponent parts of water, and is by him called hydrogene.

It is supposed to afford their principal nourishment to vegetables and thence to animals, and is perpetually riling from their decomposition; this source of it in hot climates, and in summer months, is so great as to exceed estimation. Now if this light gas passes through the atmosphere, without combining with it, it must compose another atmosphere over the aerial one; which must expand, when the pressure above it is thus taken away, to inconceivable tenuity. If this supernatural gasseous atmosphere floats upon the aerial one, like ether upon water, what must happen ? 1. it will flow from the line, where it will be produced in the greatest quantities, and become much accumulated over the poles of the earth; 2. the common air, or lower stratum of the atmosphere, will be much thinner over the poles than at the line ; because isa glass globe be filled with oil and water, and whirled upon its axis, the centrifugal power will carry the heavier fluid to the circumfer- With airy lens the scatter'd rays assault, And bend the twilight round the dusky vault ; ence, and the lighter will in consequence be sound round the axis. 3.

There may be a place at some certain latitude between the poles and the line on each side th; equator, where the in flammable supernatant atmosphere may end, owing to the greater centrifugal force of' the heavier a'irial atmosphere. 4. Between the termination of the aerial and the beginning of the gasseous atmosphere, the airs will occasionally be intermixed, and thus become inflammable by the electric spark ; these circumstances will assist in explaining the phenomena of fire-balls, northern lights, and of some variable winds, and long-continued rains. Since the above note was first writen, Mr. Volta I am in formed has applied the supposition of a supernatant atmosphere of inflammable air, to explain same phenomena in meteorology. And Mr. Lavoisier has announced his design to write on this subject.

Trait; de Chimie, Tom. I. I am happy to find these opinions supported by such respectable authority. And bend the twilight. 1. 136. The crepuscular atmosphere, or the region where the light of the sun ceases to be refracted to us, is estimated by philosophers to be between 40 and 50 miles high, at which time the fun is about 18 degrees below the ho rizon ; and the rarity of the air is supposed to be from 4,000 to 10,000 times greater than at the surface of the earth. Cotes's Hydrost. p. 123. The duration of twilight differs in different seasons and in different latitudes; in England the sliortest twilight is about the beginning of October and of March ; in more northern latitudes, where the fun never sinks more than 18 de grees below the horizon, the twilight continues the whole Eide, with broad eye and scintillating hair, The rapid Fire-ball through the midnight air ; Dart from the North on pale electric streams, Fringing Night's fable robe with transient beams.

Or rein the Planets in their swift careers, 131 Gilding with borrow'd light their twinkling spheres ; Alarm with comet-blaze the sapphire plain, The wan stars glimmering through its silver train ; Gem the bright zodiac, stud the glowing pole, Or give the Sun's phlogistic orb to roll. III. "Nymphs! your fine forms with steps impassive mock Earth's vaulted roofs of adamantine rock ; night. The time of its duration may also be occasionally affected by the varying height of the atmosphere. A number of observations on the duration of twilight in different latitudes might afford considerable information concerning the aerial strata in the higher regions of the atmosphere, and might assist in deter mining whether an exterior atmosphere of inflammable gas, op hydrogene, exists over the aerial one.

Alarm with comet-blaze. 1. 133. See additional notes, No. IV. The Sun i phlogistic orb. 1. 136. See additonal notes, No. V. Round her still centre tread the burning soil, And watch the billowy Lavas, as they boil; 140 Where, in basaltic caves imprison'd deep, Reluctant fires in dread suspension sleep ; Or sphere on sphere in widening waves expand, And glad with genial warmth the incumbent land. Thus wThen the mother-bird on moss-wove nest Lulls her fond brood beneath her plumy breast ; Warmth from her tender heart diffusive springs, And charm'd she shields them with diverging wings. " Yo u from deep cauldrons and unmeasured caves Blow flaming airs, or pour vitrescent waves; 150 Round her still centre. 1. 139. Many philosophers have be lieved that the central parts of the earth consist of a fluid mass of burning lava, which they have called a subterraneous fun ; and have supposed, that it contributes to the production of me tals, and to the growth of vegetables.

See additional notes, No. VI. Or sphere on sphere. 1. 143. See additional notes, No. Canto I. ECONOMY OF 16 O'er shining oceans ray volcanic light, Or hurl innocuous embers to the night. While with loud shouts to Etna Hecla calls, And Andes answers from his beacon'd walls ; Hurl innocuous embers. 1. 152. The immediate cause of vol canic eruptions is believed to be owing to the water of the sea, or from lakes, or inundations, finding itself a passage into the subterraneous fires, which may lie at great depths. This must first produce by its coldness a condensation of the vapour there existing, or a vacuum, and thus occasion parts of the earth's crust or shell to be forced down by the pressure os the incumbent atmosphere. Afterwards the water being suddenly raised into steam produces all the explosive effects of earthquakes.

And by new accessions of water during the intervals of the explosions the repetition of the shocks is caused. These circumstances were hourly illustrated by the fountains of boiling water in Ice land, in which the surface of the water in the boiling wells funk down low before every new ebullition. Besides these eruptions occasioned by the steam of water, there seems to be a perpetual effusion of other vapours, more noxious and (as far as it is yet known) perhaps greatly more expansile than water from the Volcanos in various parts of the world. As these Volcanos are supposed to be spiracula or breathing hoses to the great subterraneous fires, it is probable that the escape of elastic vapours from them is the cause, that the earthquakes of modern days are of such small extent compared to those of antient times, of which vestiges remain in every part of the world, and on this account may be said not only to be innocu ous, but useful.

Sea-wilder'd crews the mountain-stars admire, And Beauty beams amid terrific fire. " Thus when of old, as mystic bards presume, Huge Cyclops dwelt in Etna's rocky womb, On thundering anvils rung their loud alarms, And leagued with Vulcan forged immortal arms; Descending Venus sought the dark abode, 161 And sooth'd the labours of the grisly God. — While frowning Loves the threatening falchion wield, And tittering Graces peep behind the shield, With jointed mail their fairy limbs o'erwhelm, Or nod with pausing step the plumed helm ; With radiant eye She view'd the boiling ore, Heard undismay'd the breathing bellows roar, Admir'd their sinewy arms, and shoulders bare, And ponderous hammers lifted high in air, 170 With smiles celestial bless'd their dazzled sight, And Beauty blazed amid infernal night.

IV. " Effulgent Maids ! you round deciduous day, Tressed with soft beams, your glittering bands array ; Vol. I. C Canto I. ECONOMY OF 18 i On Earth's cold bosom, as the Sun retires, Confine with folds of air the lingering fires ; Confine with folds ofair. 1. 176. The air, like all other bad conductors of electricity, is known to be a bad conductor of heat ; and thence prevents the heat acquired from the fun s rays by the earth's surface from being so soon dissipated, in the same manner as a blanket, which may be considered as a sponge filled with air, prevents the escape of heat from the person wrapped in it. This seems to be one cause of the great degree of cold on the tops of mountains, where the rarity of the air is greater, and it therefore becomes a better conductor both of heat and electricity.

See note on Barometz, Vol. II. of this work. There is however another cause to which the great coldness of mountains and of the higher regions of the atmosphere is more immediately to be ascribed, explained by Dr. Darwin in the Philof. Trans. Vol. LXXVIII. who has there proved, by ex periments with the air-gun and air-pump, that when any por tion of the atmosphere becomes mechanically expanded, it ab sorbs heat from the bodies in its vicinity. And as the air which creeps along the plains, expands itself, by a part of the pressure being taken off when it ascends the sides of mountains ; it at the fame time attracts heat from the summits of those mountains, or other bodies which happen to be immersed in it, and thus pro duces cold. Hence he concludes that the hot air at the bottom of the Andes becomes temperate by its own rarefaction when it ascends to the city of Quito ; and by its further rarefaction be comes cooled to the freezing point when it ascends to the snowy regions on the summits of thole mountains.

To this also he at tributes the great degree of cold experienced by the aeronauts in their balloons ; and which produces hail in summer at the height osonly two or three miles in the atmosphere. CantoI. VEGETATION. i9 O'er Eve's pale forms diffuse phosphoric light, And deck with lambent flames the shrine os Night. So, warm'd and kindled by meridian skies, And view'd in darkness with dilated eyes, 180 Bologna's chalks with faint ignition blaze, Beccari's shells emit prismatic rays. Diffuse phosphoric light. 1. 177. I have often been induced to believe, from observation, that the twilight of the evenings is lighter than that of the mornings at the fame distance from noon. Some may ascribe this to the greater height of the at mosphere in the evenings having been rarefied by the fun during the day ; but as its density must at the fame time be diminished, its power of refraction would continue the fame.

I should ra ther suppose that it may be owing to the phosphorescent quality (as it is called) of almost all bodies; that is, when they have been exposed to the sun, they continue to emit light for a con siderable time afterwards. This is generally believed to arise ei ther from such bodies giving out the light which they had pre viously absorbed ; or to the continuance of a flow combustion which the light they had been previously exposed to had excited. See the next note. Beccari's shells. 1. 182. Beccari made many curious experi ments on the phosphoric light, as it is called, which becomes visible on bodies brought into a dark room, after having been pre viously exposed to the sunshine. It appears from these experi ments that almost all inflammable bodies possess this quality in a greater or less degree ; white paper or linen thus examined, after having been exposed to the sunshine, is luminous to an extra ordinarv degree ; and if a person shut up in a dark room, puts one of his hands out into the fun's light for a short time and then retracts it, he will be able to see that hand distinctly, and not the other.

These experiments seem to countenance ihe idea of $3 Canto I. ECONOMY OF 20 So to the sacred Sun in Memnon's sane, Spontaneous concords quired the matin strain ; light being absorbed and again emitted from bodies when they are removed into darkness. But Beccari further pretended, that some calcareous compositions, when exposed to red, yellow, or blue light, through coloured glasses, would on their being brought into a dark room emit coloured lights. This mistaken fact of Beccari's, Mr. Wilson decidedly refutes ; and among many other curious experiments discovered, that if oyster-shells were thrown into a common fire and calcined for about half an hour, and then brought to a person who had previously been some minutes in a dark room, that many of them would ex hibit beautiful irises of prismatic colours, whence probably arose Beccari's mistake.

Mr. Wilson hence contends, that these kinds of phosphori do not emit the light they had previously received, but that they are set on fire by the sun's rays, and continue for some time a slow combustion after they are withdrawn from the light. Wilson's Experiments on Phosphori. Dodsley, 1775. The Bolognian stone is a selenite, or gypsum, and has been long celebrated for its phosphorescent quality after having been burnt in a sulphurous fire ; and exposed when cold to the sun's light. It may be thus well imitated; Calcine oyster-shells half an hour, pulverize them when cold, and add one third part of flowers of sulphur, press them close into a small crucible, and calcine them for an hour or longer, and keep the powder in a phial close stopped . A part of this powder is to be exposed for a minute or two to the sunbeams, and then brought into a dark room.

The calcined Bolognian stone becomes a calcareous hepar of sulphur ; but the calcined shells, as they contain the animal acid, may also contain some of the phosphorus of Kun kel. See additional notes, No. X. In Memnon's fane. 1. 183. See additional notes, No. ■n — Touch'd by his orient beam, responsive rings The living lyre, and vibrates all its strings ; Accordant ailes the tender tones prolong, And holy echoes swell the adoring song. " You with light Gas the lamps nocturnal feed, Which dance and glimmer o'er the marshy mead ; Shine round Calendula at twilight hours, 191 And tip with silver all her saffron flowers ; Warm on her mossy couch the radiant Worm, Guard from cold dews her love-illumin'd form, The lamps noclurnal. 1. 189. The ignis fatuus, or Jack a lan f>rh, so frequently alluded to by poets, is supposed to originate from the inflammable air, or Hydrogene, given up from mo rales ; whic « being of a heavier kind, from its iihpurity, than that o cained from iron and water, hovers near the surface of the earth, and uniting with common air gives out light by its flow ignition.