STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. IO9 



The physical condition and the natural forces operating in the pro- 

 duction of the first living forms were carefully considered in my paper on 

 the life of plants. 



As certain physical conditions of the Earth and its atmosphere were 

 essential to the first appearance of organic forms on the Earth, so now- 

 certain and different conditions and relations must exist before the motions 

 of life begin in any vegetable or animal germ. Not a seed germinates 

 except under the conditions of moisture and heat ; then by mechanical 

 or capillary action (endosmosis) water is conveyed through the outer 

 covering of the seed and chemical action takes place to form the true 

 matter of life; then motions of life occur. Similar definite conditions 

 are essential to start the motions of life in all animal germs. 



Life, then, instead of being studied as a single force, may with 

 scientific accuracy be analyzed as a phenomenon resulting from a corre- 

 lation of many or all of the known physical forces. An " immaterial 

 power, independent of and above nature," could not be subject to material 

 conditions for its active manifestations; yet we see by observation that 

 all vital phenomena occur under specific physical conditions, relations 

 and forces. If the conditions causing life are materially changed, the 

 motions of life cease. Observe the millions of vegetable and animal 

 forms ushered into being during our short summer, which are all suddenly 

 cut off by the first frosts of autumn. During winter in this climate all 

 active motions cease in vegetable and the lowest animal forms, while the 

 higher forms of animals are improved by the change. So the physical 

 conditions which destroy one form add to the longevity of another — in 

 proof again that all vital phenomena are absolutely subject to a great 

 variety of physical forces. From such varied forces we should expect 

 just such a variety of living forms as now exist. 



Both variety in forms and complexity in organism of plants and 

 animals are as easily accounted for by material causes as are the different 

 elements and compounds in inorganic matter, and especially as the 

 different forms of crystals. Crystallization is not a single force, but a 

 phenomenon of matter resulting from the action of many forms of 

 physical force. The forms of crystals are scarcely less varied than the 

 forms of leaves and flowers of plants. The delicate, beautiful and won- 

 derfully accurate fern-leaves often seen traced on a window in winter 

 need quite as much an "immaterial force" to account for this strange 

 result as any vital phenomenon connected with plants and animals; and 

 yet who doubts that no other than material forces produced these varied 

 crystalline forms, from the most simple to the most complex? 



Every plant and every animal at the beginning of its life is a simple 

 cell, a starting or growing point in embryo likeness of its parent. Most 

 organisms produce during life thousands and often millions of seeds or 

 eggs, each of which, with the necessary physical conditions and forces, 

 will develop into a new individual. It is, however, well known that the 

 germs produced by plants and animals are out of all proportion to the 

 number that attain the motions of life ; so, out of the infinite myriads 

 of the germs of Earth only an exceedingly small number chance to 



