STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 1 i i 



specific physical conditions and forces, as we have clearly seen. If we 

 understand the separate and correlated action of the known forces of 

 nature, we may arrive at a clearer comprehension of the so-called vital 

 force. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity and mechan- 

 ical force are transmutable into each other, back and forth. The mutual 

 convertibility of forces into each other is called "correlation of forces;" 

 and the persistence of the same amount, amid all these protean forms, is 

 called "conservation of forces." If the vital force or the life of plants 

 and animals is in any sense a separate and distinct force, it is so in nature 

 and exists as one of the material forces, just as heat, light, chemical 

 affinity, electricity, etc., are material forces; as in all its varied mani- 

 festations we find it correlated with these forces, much as they are cor- 

 related with each other. 



Mr. Le Conte says : "The most important phenomena in the life-history of a plant, in 

 fact the starting point of all life, both vegetable and animal, is the formation of organic 

 matter in the leaves. The necessary conditions for this wonderful change of mineral 

 into organic matter seem to be sunlight, chlorophyl, and living protoplasm or bio- 

 plasm. * * * * It would seem in this case, therefore, that physical force 

 (light) is changed into nascent chemical force, and this nascent chemical force, under 

 the peculiar conditions present, forms organic matter, and reappears as vital force. 

 Light falling on green leaves is destroyed or consumed in doing the work of decompo- 

 sition, disappears as light to reappear as nascent chemical energy ; and this in its turn 

 disappears in forming organic matter, to reappear as the vital force of the organic 

 matter thus formed. * * * * To illustrate, as sun-heat falling upon water 

 disappears as heat to reappear as mechanical power, raising the water in the clouds; so 

 sunlight falling upon green leaves disappears as light to reappear as vital force lifting 

 matter from the mineral into the organic kingdom." 



President Burrill introduced Prof. Cyrus Thomas, State Ento- 

 mologist, and member of the Committee on Entomology, who gave an 

 interesting lecture, which was fully illustrated by immensely magnified 

 drawings, colored to life, of the various insects in different stages of 

 development, of which the lecture treated. The following is the 



lecture : 



LIFE IN LITTLE THINGS. 



KY PROF. CYRUS THOMAS, OP" CARBONDALE. 



Scarcely have we entered upon the study of living natural objects, 

 before we encounter one of the most difficult problems ever presented to 

 the human mind for solution — the problem of life — the question. 

 What is life? A problem yet unsolved, a question whose answer is still, 

 to a great extent, shrouded in mystery. There is not a living object in 

 the universe of which we have any knowledge that has not a halo of 

 mystery surrounding it. The life of every vegetable, from that of the 

 minute Protococcus that sheds a crimson blush over the arctic snows to 

 that of the gigantic Sequoia of California ; the life of every animal, from 

 the microscopic Monere to that of the huge Leviathan, is still more or 

 less shrouded in a cloud of mystery, which the keenest glance of science 

 has, so far, been unable to penetrate. So multitudinous are the form.-> 



