23 
conclusion—revert to the subject with which we set out. I 
brought before you a few instances only in which there was a 
singular identity of odour as regarded certain animals or animal 
substances, and certain plants. In one of these cases the same 
odour that arose from an animal and a plant, was found to 
proceed from a mineral substance also. We can hardly suppose 
that these instances stand alone in the world. Far more likely 
that there are hundreds of such cases—confining ourselves to 
animals and plants alone—that have never been noticed, or never 
duly reflected on by naturalists, 
And I think we have a clue to the explanation of this anomaly 
in the conception of there having been formerly (throughout, it 
may be, all space and time) a commingling of such atoms as would 
favour, according to circumstances, the similarity or dissimilarity 
of whatever forms of life the evolution of after ages might cause 
to arise on our earth, not merely as regards the odours they 
emit, but in respect of all their other characters. 
POSTSCRIPT. 
Since this paper was written the November Number of the 
“Nineteenth Century” has come under my notice, in which 
there is an Article by Norman Lockyer, one of the highest 
authorities in this country in spectroscopic work as connected 
with celestial phenomena. It is headed ‘“‘The History of a 
Star,” and very shortly after commencing his subject, and stating 
what results had been obtained by spectroscopic observers of late 
years in determining the constitution of the sun, planets, nebula, 
&c., he comes to this general conclusion, “that if the study of 
“ meteorites be conjoined with that of the heavenly bodies, the 
“story told by the spectroscope enables us to go a step further, 
“and to say that not only have we the same matter everywhere, 
‘but all celestial bodies, including the earth, are due to an ex- 
“‘ quisitely simple evolution of matter in the form of meteoritic 
