TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 133 
informed of similar eases by Mr. George Miller of San Nicolas, a gentleman of great 
talent and observation, many years resident in the Cape de Verds. 
The author concludes his notice of this galactagogue of the Cape de Verds, by 
inviting a fair trial of its action in our more temperate regions, which, if found to be 
similar to that which it manifests within the tropics, will open an interesting field of 
inquiry as regards its hygienic, medicinal, medico-legal and other relations. 
On the Reciprocal Relation of the Vital and Physical Forces. 
By Grorce Newport, F.R.S., PLS. 
In this communication, addressed in a letter to Dr. Lankester, F.R.S., one of the 
Secretaries of the Section, the author first drew attention to the views of Dr. Fowler, 
F.R.S., in a paper which had been read at a meeting of the British Association at 
Birmingham in September 1849, and an abstract of which is published in the Report 
of the Association for that year, p. 77. From this abstract it appears that Dr. Fowler 
advocates the view that the vital forces not only have reciprocal relations amongst 
themselves, but also with the physical forces, and that in tie language employed by 
Mr. Grove with regard to the physical forces, they are mutually correlated, and are 
convertible the one into the other. 
A writer in the British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review advanced a 
similar theory in that Journal in January 1848, and during the present year a paper 
on the same subject by Dr. Carpenter, F.R.S. has been communicated to the Royal 
Society. 
A pete now showed, that so long ago as November 1845. ἃ similar view had 
been advanced by himself in a memoir ‘On the Natural History, Anatomy, and De- 
velopment of the Oil-Beetle, AZel6e,’ read to the Linnean Society, but that the Council 
of the Society had omitted to publish this part of his paper in their Transactions when 
his memoir was printed. 
The author’s view had for its foundation, that vital force is derived from without ; 
that its degrees or kinds have a close relation with the physical forces; and that, like the 
vital force, the instinctive power or force in animals is a change of form of these forces, 
in or through the organization of nervous structure. The force referred to in the 
author’s paper read to the Linnean Society, in illustration of this view, was light. 
He had been led to the view he advanced through the results of some experiments on 
the effects of light on the instinct and habits of the young Melée, as detailed in his 
paper, and through the discovery, then recently announced by Dr. Faraday, that light 
and electricity are the same principle, as Faraday and Matteucci had previously 
shown there is reason to believe is the case with electricity and the nervous function, 
and which seems to be confirmed by the recent labours of the latter philosopher, 
published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1850. 
The author, after remarking that it was perhaps unnecessary for him to restate now, 
in support of the doctrine that the vital forces have a reciprocal relation with the 
physical, those circumstances which had already been mentioned, added, in support of 
the view advanced, the following facts relating to the evolutions of vital force in the 
embryo :— 
Amongst insects there are some species of Canadian Perlide which undergo their 
transformations, and even pair at very low temperatures at the end of winter, when the 
ice begins to crack ; they do so even in the crevices of decaying ice. This is the habit 
of Capnia vernalis and of Brachyptera glacialis. The ova, although thus deposited 
at a temperature but little above that of freezing, are produced at a time when diurnal 
warmth is increasing, because accessions of heat-force from without are required for 
the evolution of vital force within them, and to induce the formation of structure. The 
ova of the common earwig, Forficula, are rarely deposited at a temperature below | 
43° or 44° Fahr., and as both Degeer and the author have observed, the female at- 
tends to and incubates them during the whole period of development, turning and 
removing them from place to place according as the locality may happen to be of the 
required heat or moisture. The cells in the embryo or foundation layer of the 1π|- 
pregnated egg grow by accessions of heat and moisture from without, acquire gravity 
through chemical changes promoted by heat, subdivide and multiply, and while the 
growth of the whole tissue is thus promoted by their individual influence, vital force is 
