REVIEW. 287 



and we quote it merely to show Dr. Patten's appreciation of the 

 scope and tendency of morphological research. 



2. A few lines below the passage above quoted we find the follow- 

 ing dictum. " We must expect a certain amount of structural 

 uniformity in those organs which have to carry by the same means 

 the same forms of energy to similar perceptive centres." This 

 seems to be almost a truism ; if the " same means " are employed 

 for such a purpose we certainly must expect uniformity. But 

 what does our author mean by " carrying the same forms of energy 

 to similar perceptive centres ?" He is speaking of the eye ; what 

 is the form of energy which he imagines to be carried by means of 

 the eye and optic nerves to a perceptive centre ? A perusal of his 

 final chapter explains this paradoxical allusion. Our readers will 

 hardly credit the statement in the first instance, but it is actually 

 true that Dr. Patten supposes that the energy of sunlight is 

 carried with quantitative significance by nerves from the eye to 

 nerve centres. He writes (p. 712) : " In plants this sun energy is 

 used in the chlorophyll grains, for in them the production of 

 organic matter takes place. But in animals it is probable that the 

 pigment granules are only the receivers of energy — the heliophags, 

 as we shall call them — while this energy is transmitted by nerve- 

 fibres to centres where it is consumed in the production of proto- 

 plasmic compounds." This astounding theory of " heliophags " is 

 only part of a general theory of " dynamophagy," which is deve- 

 loped at great length by Dr. Patten in his final chapter. 



" Living bodies," he says, "are distinguished by their power to 

 absorb matter and energy, and from them produce high compounds 

 by whose disintegration force is liberated as motion. This se- 

 quence of events is vitality We have only to deal with the 



second of these processes, the absorption of energy or dynamo- 

 phagy, and more especially with the absorption of solar energy or 

 heliopliagy. " Eyes then are primarily not organs of sight but 

 heliophags, organs for the absorption of solar energy, and only 

 secondarily acquire a sensory significance ! Similarly auditory 

 organs are declared to be absorbers of the energy of sound vibra- 

 tions, whilst "the energy of coarser vibrations, of pressure, contact, 

 or movement " is "absorbed " by tactile hairs and " that of gases, 

 solutions or chemical compounds," by means of taste-cells ! 



It is thus coolly proposed by Dr. Patten to revolutionise all the 

 established conclusions of modern physiology in regard to the 

 nervous system, of which conclusions he, it is only fair to say, 

 appears to be entirely ignorant. He actually imagines that the 

 energy received from external bodies is quantitatively transmitted 

 from the surface of an animal by its nerves to the nerve-centres and 

 there made use of. It is hardly necessary to point out that such a 

 notion is simply preposterous, and that to speak of " the absorption 

 of energy " as he does, betrays not only a fundamental ignorance 

 of physiology but also of physics. The energy of the nervous 



