15 
generations of nobler creatures it has seen age after age “ come 
like shadows—so depart.” It has outlived all the vicissitudes of 
existence which the earth has gone through. It has “read the 
book of fate,” and seen “the revolution of the times” 
“Make mountains level, and the continent, 
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself 
Into the sea.” 
And yet classification based on structure, to be logical, can find 
no place for such as these! Imagine the world when only these 
Infusoria or perhaps even lower types existed! Yet out of 
such structureless protoplasm the life of the earth has arisen. 
Out of this has sprung those kingdoms, classes, genera, orders, 
&c., which make up the complex world of vegetal and animal 
existences, group within group, cycle within cycle, recalling to us 
the clusters of stars and revolving systems which arose out of the 
diffuse nebula in which they were potentially contained. In that 
homogenous jelly-like protoplasm life also was fotential, It has 
realised itself in the organisation and the resulting faculties and 
powers of all those countless forms in which that energy has 
embodied itself. 
But the great law of the Conservation of Energy teaches us 
that when fofential energy becomes actual the total quantity 
remains the same. There is neither loss nor gain. 
Let us, then, like the great dramatist of Greece, strive “ to 
see life steadily, and to see it zwho/e,”—not as circumscribed by 
our own limited experience, not as measured by our own narrow 
faculties, not stamped with our own petty ideals of perfection,— 
but to see it from a higher standpoint, embracing a wider horizon, 
and in the scope of a larger vision. 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13ru. 
British Oak Crees and the Galls 
found upon them. 
(With Lantern Illustrations.) 
EDWD. CONNOLD, F.E.S. 
