172 DR ALISON'S OBSERVATIONS ON 



up. After Avliat Liebig calls the " peculiar mode of attraction" which operates in 

 living bodies, has led to the formation of certain organic compounds, these com- 

 poimds lose their connection with living bodies, become liable to an infinite 

 number of changes and decompositions, and thus give origin to an infinite variety 

 of substances — generally of temporary duration only, because retained in their 

 form by attractions of no gi-eat intensity — a])plicable to many useful purposes, 

 hut foreign to the mquiries of' the physiologist. He is concerned only with the 

 chemical changes which take place in living bodies themselves, and during the state 

 of life; and the results of recent inquiries seem to me sufficient to shew, that the 

 fundamental and peculiar arrangements of chemical elements there observed are 

 less numerous, and the laws regulating them more simple, than they have usually 

 been thought. 



In considering this subject, we are enabled, by the results of the inquiries of 

 geologists and physiologists, to revert to the period of the introduction of living 

 bodies into the world, and reflect on the conditions then assigned for their exist- 

 ence. We are justified, by reason, in allowing the imagination to fall back on 

 the time when this Earth rolled through space an inanimate mass ; and if any 

 minds, besides that of the Great Ruler of the universe, were connected with it, they 

 did not hold their connection through the medium of any organized structure. 

 For I believe Ave are justified in laying down these propositions as established, 

 first. That the simply physical arrangements of this globe were completed be- 

 fore any organised beings were created ; secondly. That vegetables were created 

 and lived chiefly on the atmosphere, fixing large quantities of carbon from it on 

 the earth's surface, before animals were called into existence ; and, thirdly, That at 

 whatever time their existence began, either the first living being of every species, 

 vegetable and animal, or the first ovum from which that being was developed, 

 must have been formed in a manner wholly different from that in which any 

 living bodies, at least of the higher orders, are now reproduced ; i. e., that they 

 must have been formed in a manner strictly miraculous, and, of course, beyond 

 the limits of physical science. 



But although we cannot ascend higher, in prosecuting this subject, than to 

 inquire in what manner the first plants, or the germs of the first plants, were 

 enabled so to act on the inorganic matter around them as to extract from it the 

 materials, first of their own groMth and sustentation, and afterwards of all other 

 organized beings, — yet in the inquiry, thus limited, important progress has been 

 made. From the time when these nascent organized bodies sprung into existence, 

 we must regard it as an ultimate fact, that they were endowed with the power, 

 which all the vegetables that have succeeded them have exercised, of so modify- 

 ing the attractions existing among the particles of matter, as to cause many of 

 these particles from the air and the water immediately surrounding them, to 

 enter into their substance, by their roots and leaves, or by the organs which soon 



