The Monad's Place in Nature. 223 



at least of Infusoria, and taken in connection with the other expe- 

 riences seems to show at least a probability that in this minute form 

 a great process of the most gigantic importance is taking place in 

 nature. 



I think it is not making too extravagant a demand upon the 

 imagination or the credulity to suggest that here, in the border-land 

 of the two kingdoms, animal and vegetal, nature is performing a 

 vast operation in converting the dead matter of the universe to 

 living forms, by a process of cell-growth which is so universal as 

 to reveal to us some of the workings of a vast law. 



We may fairly consider the living cell, in its initial state, to be 

 a vesicle (too minute for the highest powers) which by dialysis 

 absorbs to its cavity the elementary atoms of which the dead organic 

 matter had been composed, and which it is now ready to part with 

 in consequence of its vitality having ceased. Upon this pabulum 

 the living cell grows and increases until it is able to give off proles, 

 either as the j)in-point Monad, the visible Monad, from the Pseudo- 

 gonidium, or the Euglena, born of Conferva rivularis, Vaucheria, 

 or some other plant of this nature. 



The proles, starting at the most minute point, becomes either 

 the Mucedo (converting by its growth the dying particles of hydro- 

 carbon compounds to the alcohols and aethers of animal or vegetal 

 decay), or the Infusorium (gradually developing to Eotifer, and 

 thence probably to higher organisms), or the beautiful green 

 Euglena (on the rank hotbeds of farmyards and other nitrogenous 

 depots), or the delicate Chlorococcus (whence arise Farmelia Col- 

 lenia, or Lichens hanging in graceful festoons from the " formed 

 matter " of old tree barks), or through Pahnella cruenta, Oscil- 

 latoria, Lyngbya, to mosses, forming those sponge-like reservoirs of 

 moisture which in their decay give a suitable nidus to the air-borne 

 seeds of the sycamore or other trees, as may be seen on the towers 

 of many of our older churches. There many a good-sized tree 

 grows in the debris of vegetable matter mixed with the sihca flakes 

 of dust wind-borne from the dry roads. 



It will here be seen that this branch of study bears as it were 

 the seeds of one of the most important investigations which can 

 occupy the thought of the reflective. It seems as it were to 0])en 

 out a page of the world's history which shows that from the smallest 

 beginnings the greatest of results follow. It serves to show that 

 there is no part too small to be of the highest importance, and 

 that the decay of nature is but the other side of the portal of life 

 — equally beautiful, equally honoured by the Creator with the 

 most minute detail of perfection. Man is apt to look upon that 

 which is ceasing to possess life as disagreeable, ofi'ensive, unworthy 

 of attention — to be, in fact, cast away as used up and belonging to 

 the despised condition of waste. Let such a thinker then turn his 



VOL. VI. R 



