113 



out its 150 ozs. of blood per minute, liour after hour, day after 

 day, down to the hoar hairs of an octogenarian life. Thus — 



" From deartli to plenty, and from death to life, 



Is Nature's progress when she lectures man 



In heavenly truth, evincing as she makes 



The gi-and transition, that their lives and works 



A soul in all things, and tliat soul is God." 



( Winter Walk at Noon.) 



Xo department of physiology affords so great an insight into 

 the process of cell formation as the study of the growth of 

 spongelets and root fibrils. Here they caught a glimpse of the 

 minutest speck of protoplasm, passing into the formation of a 

 primitive cell-wall and cavity ; further on they recognised colour 

 in it ; chlorophyl was seen in cells five inches distant from the 

 axis of the stem ; then aliove this region, granules of gum and 

 starch appear. A living plant in its rootlets, and a living animal 

 in its digestive apparatus, each represents a chemical laboratorj^, 

 in Avhich compound bodies Avere analysed or separated into their 

 component parts, and reconipounded into other substances dis- 

 tinguished as vegetable or animal products. The pr oteine bases 

 might be set forth by remembering the German adverb " Noch " 

 (yet still more). Give to nature this brief alphabet, and four- 

 other metalloids, the initials of which form our English word 

 " lips," and she would bring into being an infinity of nitrates, 

 oxides, carbonates, and hydrates of lime — iron, phosphorus (or 

 potash) and soda (or sulphur). These four proteine elements 

 Avere wholly engaged in working up the compounds of Ijinary and 

 ternary substances, as starch, gum, glucose ; but when a quarter- 

 nary body is demanded, she calls into the service a metalloid, and 

 produces gluten, albumen, either witli sulphur or phosphorus, <tc. 

 This tiny, yet stupendous and ever busy world of eddies and of 

 currents under ground might be better exemplified by putting 

 before them the effect Avhich was produced by the clashing 

 together of two elements forming water. If one pound of hydro- 

 gen, a diamagnetic element, was forced into union with eight 

 pounds of the paramagnetic element, oxygen, the mechanical 



