1864. ] Pamphlets. 729 
drawings, which upon the wholo are well executed. In the course of 
the descriptions occasion is taken to notice the various forms of root, 
stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit; and the youthful readers are led in a 
very pleasing and attractive way to notice the wild flowers which are 
strewn around them. Lessons are also given in regard to the plants 
of Scripture as occasion offers, and the thoughts are directed to the 
contemplation of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. In one of 
the volumes Miss Plues confines her attention to flowering plants, 
beginning at the Ranunculuses and ending with Grasses. In the other 
volume she considers the flowerless plants, as Ferns, Mosses, Lichens, 
Seaweeds, and Fungi. These works cannot fail to be useful to those 
who wish to enter on the study of native plants, and they are pleasing 
companions in country rambles. 
PAMPHLETS. 
On Viratrty. By the Rev. H. H. Higgins, M.A.* 
Or the various questions which the physiologist is called upon to con- 
sider in the course of his researches into the phenomena exhibited by 
organized beings, none perhaps possesses greater interest than the one 
discussed in this short but able pamphlet by Mr. Higgins. Is there, 
or is there not, a force resident in those bodies which, from their 
special manifestations, we term organisms or living beings, over and 
above those chemico-physical forces the nature and mode of action of 
which we recognize and especially study in inorganic bodies? This 
force has had various terms applied to it by those who affirm its exist- 
ence, e. g. vital force, germ force, vital principle, or vitality, as in the 
pamphlet before us. 
The older physiologists, we may say, universally believed in such 
a specific organic force, and sought in it an explanation of most of the 
phenomena to the investigation of which they applied themselves. But 
the more refined methods of inquiry adopted in recent years have 
proved that there is no need to presuppose the existence of a specific 
vital force acting in many of these processes, for they are perfectly 
explicable by the operation of well-known chemico-physical laws. For 
it must ever be kept in mind that an organism is a material body, and 
as such is subjected to the action of those forces which operate in and 
on matter, though these are undoubtedly modified and often rendered 
more complicated and difficult to recognize than in inorganic matter. 
Hence has arisen a physiological school, whose leading members are 
some of the most brilliant and distinguished of living German physio- 
logists, who, from the results which they have obtained by applying to 
the investigation of organic processes the methods of chemico-physical 
* Read before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, January 11th, 
64. 
