368 Mr, Savory on the Relation of the \_^'A^ 10, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 10, 1861. 



The Duke op Northumberland, K.G. F.R.S. President, 

 in the Chair. 



WiiiiiAM ScovELL Savory, Esq. F.R.S. 



On the Relation of the Vegetable and Animal to the Inorganic 



Kingdom, 



After some introductory remarks to show that Plants and Animals, 

 when viewed in the relation in which they stand to Inorganic substances, 

 may fairly be regarded as together constituting one great kingdom of 

 nature — the organized, the speaker proceeded to consider the relation 

 of organized to inorganic bodies, in structure, in composition, and in 

 function. He challenged the truth of the cell doctrine, and asserted 

 that its leading propositions were not tenable. Not only are some of 

 the simplest tissues of the most complex plants and animals formed with- 

 out the direct agency of cells, but also that elaborate tissue, striated 

 muscular fibre. He referred to the common Amoeba or Proteus, as 

 an example of a living form, simpler than an unicellular organism, 

 inasmuch as it exhibits no distinction of cell wall and cell contents ; 

 and to Actinophrys, as an illustration of a structure apparently cel- 

 lular, produced by simple reticulation of a structureless amorphous 

 substance. Vegetable cellular tissue has been generally supposed to 

 be formed by the multiplication of distinct cells, but there is better 

 evidence of its production by a similar process of reticulation of proto- 

 plasm. The simplest forms of life, and the simplest tissues of the 

 highest, reveal no difference in structure, — no distinction of parts to the 

 severest scrutiny, and cannot, therefore, as heterogeneous bodies, be 

 distinguished from homogeneous inorganic matter. 



Chemistry draws no line of demarcation between the organized and 

 inorganic kingdoms. All questions of composition are of degree only, 

 not of kind. 



Life constitutes the grand distinction. The difference is infinitely 

 greater between living and dead organic matter than between dead 

 organic and inorganic substances. Without attempting to describe it, 

 life may be distinguished by its effects. In life, when reduced to its 

 simplest terms, and separated from all those elaborate details which 

 invest it in the more complex forms, there exists a definite relation 

 between destruction and renewal, a regulated adjustment between 



