regulating Vital and Physical Phenomena. 343 



properties, and hence cease soon after general or somatic death, 

 although they may continue so long as the necessary conditions 

 can be artificially maintained. It has been considered by many 

 writers that the excretion of carbon in respiration is due to a 

 secreting action in the lungs ; this we do not mean to deny, 

 particularly as the elementary structure of the lungs corres- 

 ponds precisely with that which is now known to be common 

 to all secreting organs ; but we think that from the function of 

 respiration, which is essentially a chemical process, an argu- 

 ment may be drawn respecting the operation of chemical prin- 

 ciples in the formation of other secretions, although their na- 

 ture is at present so obscure. There can be no doubt, how- 

 ever, that they are modified by the electric state of the or- 

 gans by which they are respectively formed ; and this fact leads 

 us to another very interesting series of details, from which it 

 would appear that electricity is a most important, though little 

 recognised agent, in the operations of organic chemistry. 



The late researches of Dr Faraday have fully proved the 

 identity of electrical with chemical affinity, and that all che- 

 mical changes are attended with a disturbance of electric equi- 

 librium. If therefore the changes occasioned by the growth of 

 organized systems are immediately governed by laws similar 

 to those of inorganic matter, we should expect to find that 

 electricity is constantly being developed by them, in the same 

 manner as we artificially obtain it by chemical decomposition or 

 recomposition.* 



There is no deficiency of evidence that this is the case. 

 During the germination of seeds, the two principal changes are 

 the rejection of carbonic and acetic acids ; and it has been re- 

 cently ascertained that there is at the same time a manifesta- 



" M. Becquerel has described a most simple apparatus for the development 

 of electricity, consisting merely of a syphon filled with fine sand, and having 

 •one leg filled with an acid, the other with an alkaline solution. These fluids 

 meet at the most depending part of the tube, where there is an orifice plugged 

 by a bit of asbestos, which conveys away the compound solution as fast as 

 formed. Wires placed in the two legs indicate strongly opposed electrical 

 states, and the voltaic current thus produced, continues until all the fluid 

 elements have been united. It is impossible to consider this result without 

 acknowledging the remarkable influence which capillarity must have over che- 

 mical action, a condition so evident and constant in organized beings. 



