372 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 





on the other hand shows that, in human being-s, with injured spines, the 

 actions are not sensorial, but reflex. 3d. But as the whole science of physi- 

 ology presupposes that between vertebrate animals there is such a general 

 concordance, that whatever is demonstrable of the organs in one animal 

 will be true of similar organs in another; and inasmuch as it is barely con- 

 ceivable that the spinal cord of a frog, a pigeon, and a rabbit, should have 

 a sensorial function, while that of a man has none, we must conclude that 

 the seeming contradiction afforded by human pathology admits of reconcile- 

 ment. No fact really invalidates any other fact. If the animal is such an 

 organized machine that an external impression will produce the same actions 

 as would have been produced by sensation and volition, we have absolutely 

 no ground for believing in the sensibility of animals at all; and we may as 

 well accept the bold hypothesis of Descartes, that they are mere automata. 

 If the frog is so organized, that, when he cannot defend himself in one way, 

 the internal mechanism will set going several other ways ; if he can perform, 

 unconsciously, all those actions which he performs consciously, it is surely 

 superfluous to assign any consciousness at all. His organism may be called 

 a self-adjusting mechanism, in which consciousness finds no more room than 

 in the mechanism of a watch. 



Sir B. Brodie said the paper was most valuable, but he thought the exper- 

 iments might be claimed for reflex action almost as much as in favor of the 

 theory of Mr. Lewes. 



Mr. Nunneley said that the paper asserted too broadly that it had been 

 held that sensation and volition were suspended in sleep. The person who 

 talked in sleep and the sleep-Avalker both disproved the assumption of entire 

 suspension. He had himself removed the spinal marrow of cats and rab- 

 bits, and they had lived and moved for eight hours afterwards. If they de- 

 parted from the position that volition was resident in the higher masses of 

 the spinal marrow, they must go further, and maintain that it existed in dif- 

 ferent parts of the body; and that would lead them back to the opinion of 

 the earlier anatomists, that the nervous S3 r stem was not essential to vitality. 



Prof. Owen, in reply, directed attention to the comparative largeness of 

 the human brain and the smallness of the spinal column of man, as com- 

 pared with those of the animals experimented upon, and said it might be 

 that there were some sensations felt by the lower animals which are not ex- 

 perienced by human beings; and if the inquiry were pursued, with this idea 

 kept in view, they might be able to reconcile what now appeared to be con- 

 flicting. 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION AND GROWTH OF CORALS. 



At a recent meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, Professor 

 Agassiz gave an account of a recent visit to the reefs of Florida and his 

 explorations of coralline growths. He estimated the rate of coral growth to 

 be only a few inches in a century, a tenth or twelfth part less than was for- 

 merly supposed; and, supposing the reef rises from a depth of twelve fath- 

 oms, he would calculate its age, upon arrival at the surface of the water, to 

 be about twenty-five thousand years, and the total age of the four distinct 

 concentric reefs of the southern extremity of the peninsula to be one hun- 

 dred thousand years. Professor Agassiz in his remarks presented evidence 

 that Millepora is not a Polyp but a Hydroid. 



Prof. Wm. B. Rogers said that the physical conditions could not have 



