TEANSACTIONS. 37 



gauized existence, which lives indeed, but has neither breath 

 nor the power of locomotion. All physical life in fact orig- 

 inates in vegetation. Vegetation alone is capable of con- 

 ferring the vital principle and superinducing it upon the 

 other properties of dead matter, and we derive exclusively 

 from plants the element that makes our flesh to differ from 

 the " dust," whereof our first progenitor, unlike his de- 

 scendants, was directly formed, and from the ashes into 

 which that flesh is at last to be resolved. 



Nor is it true, that the life thus given ceases with the 

 power of assimilation, growth, and development, with the 

 higher functions of sensation and organic movement, or 

 with the Immaterial gifts of earthly consciousness and vo- 

 lition. So long as the organic forces bind matter together 

 in combinations which war with and successfully resist the 

 laws of chemical affinity, so long that matter is instinct 

 with life, so long it may nourish, build up and become con- 

 natural with new and successive organisms. Vitality sur- 

 vives sensation and consciousness and irritability, and is 

 not extinct until chemical decomposition has resolved its 

 products into those rudimental elements, whereof not that 

 which lives alone, but the solid rock, the fluid waters, and 

 the all-encompassing atmosphere also, are composed. The 

 cloths that form the cerements of the Pharaohs, the wood, 

 en coflins that enshrine them, the papyrus that records 

 their history, nay, the fleshly tenements of the monarchs 

 themselves, which the art of the euibalmer has made to de- 

 fy the crumbling touch of time, the horned Apis they wor- 

 shipped, the mammoth and the rhinoceros which arctic ice- 

 cliffs have preserved through whole geological periods to 

 feed the polar bear of our own era, all these " still live,'' 

 and may yet pass into and continue to live in and with a 

 thousand successive animated forms, before the mysterious 

 power that grouped their substance into- organic combina. 

 tions shall be exhausted. 



Hence agricultubb, which directs and stimulates the 



