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Besides destruction by design to obtain the bodies of animals for food, another extensive sacrifice of life is committed in the very act of obtaining vegetable food and other necessaries, every plant having many disputants* and the ground, and even much of the water we drink being the habitation of numerous animated beings, which may be destroyed by every stroke of the spade, or every drought; but this mode of destruction is of a less blameable character than any other to which blame may attach, because not done with design, but should be avoided when unnecessary. Indeed even vegetables themselves should not be injured unnecessarily; who would be bold enough to assert that they are not imdued with sensation, when their similitude to animals and their exquisite and complicated organizations seem to affirm that they live and feel? The sensitive plant which droops on being touched, being one instance in favour of the idea. Another instance being in the plant which devours flies, this plant keeping open till a fly settles in it and then closes and devours it. (en) |