REAL AND APPARENT DEATH. 401 



them. Twice she returned alone to the unequal task, reproaching bit- 

 terly, no doubt, the faithlessness of her associates. 



Those who doubt our reports of the extremely timid political cau- 

 tion of these insect tribes will convince themselves that we are not 

 exaggerating if they will but refer to Sir John's very interesting ac- 

 count of these formican Conservatives Tories they are not, for ob- 

 viously there is no blatant element in the politics of the ants. Their 

 democracy, when they are democrats, is the democracy of the Swiss 

 Republic, not the democracy of the Imperialists, still less the democ- 

 racy of the French Revolution. Spectator. 



DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN REAL AND APPARENT 



DEATH. 



By Dk. WILLIAM FEASER. 



A SATISFACTORY definition of life should express conditions 

 involved in every phase of vital development, but never identi- 

 fied with any mode of inanimate existence. Transmutation represents 

 one such fundamental distinction between animate and inanimate 

 objects ; for, although some inorganic combinations possess a degree 

 of permutability consistent with substantial integrity, this in particu- 

 lar cases is always uniform in character and limited in extent. Ice, 

 for example, may become successively changed into the liquid and 

 gaseous state without chemical decomposition, but there is an intrinsic 

 limit to such permutation, for under similar circumstances of pressure, 

 at an unalterably fixed elevation of temperature, it invariably becomes 

 resolved into simpler constituents. 



There are apparently no such inherent restrictions to organic trans- 

 mutations, which may be perpetuated indefinitely, under appropriate 

 supplementary conditions, without perceptible intrinsic exhaustion. 

 Yet organisms are never sufliciently independent to spontaneously 

 evolve such progressive results, but require the constant accession of 

 extrinsic energy to develop their included potentialities. 



The sun is the physical source of extraneous energy for every spe- 

 cies of vital change occurring on the earth's surface, as through the 

 immediate agency of its rays vegetables are enabled to abstract from 

 the surrounding medium those elements adapted to their special needs ; 

 and, although animals can not thus directly appropriate solar energy, 

 yet they are enabled to utilize it by the assimilation of certain of these 

 vegetable products which it has previously served to elaborate. 



As all the progressive transmutations which indispensably consti- 

 tute individual life are dependent on the constant incretion of material 

 VOL. xvm. 26 



