Dr Brewster on the Motion of the Molecules of Bodies. 219 



Brown's observations), I recognized the same changes which I 

 have already mentioned ; but I have never perceived a single 

 motion in the least degree characteristic of animal life. The 

 difference between these two kinds of motions, and the causes 

 to which the former may be ascribed, are so admirably ex- 

 plained in a memoir which I have lately received from that 

 eminent French physiologist, M. Raspail, that I need make 

 no apology for laying before the Society a translation of the 

 most prominent part of it. It was read at the Institute of 

 France before Mr Brown's observations had reached Paris, 

 and was drawn up in reference to the Memoir of M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart, which had excited much notice.* 



It is impossible, we think, for any person familiar with the 

 microscope, to read these observations of M. Raspail without 

 being satisfied of their accuracy, and without believing that 

 they are applicable to almost all the phenomena observed by 

 Mr Brown and M. Brongniart. But even if they did not af- 

 ford a sufficient explanation of the motions in question ; — nay, 

 if these motions resisted every method of explanation, it is the 

 last supposition in philosophy that they are owing to animal 

 life ; and in future times, when the science of molecular orga- 

 nization shall be farther advanced, it will be viewed in the 

 same light as the opinion of Kepler, that the planets them- 

 selves were living animals, swimming in the ethereal ocean 

 of the heavens. What, indeed, are all the motions of the 

 planets, — what are their progressions, their stations, their 

 retrogradations — their revolutions — their nutations, but so 

 many movements in the larger molecules of the universe. 

 Why, then, need we wonder that the microscopic molecules of 

 this lower world should exhibit their attractions, their rota- 

 tions, their combinations, their dilatations, and their contrac- 

 tions ? We are disposed, indeed, to go much farther, and to 

 ask, Why should not the molecules of the hardest solids have 

 their orbits, their centres of attraction, and the same varied 

 movements which are observed in planetary and nebulous 

 matter ? The existence of such movements has already been 

 recognized in mineral and other bodies. A piece of sugar melted 



• The whole of this Memoir was published in our last Number, p. 96. 



