534 REVIEWS. \_May, 



Ivy ? Why is the Apple-tree " uneasy seated by funereal Yew or 



Walnut"? 



Morphology cannot answer these apparently simple questions; 

 the laws of deduplication, degeneration, suppression, and non-de- 

 velopment solve no difficulties. Idiosyncrasy, the individual pe- 

 culiarity originally given by the Almighty Creator to the hum- 

 blest as well as to the highest created being, is the key which 

 opens all the mysterious natural and intellectual tendencies of 

 organized and intelligent creatures. What a simple organization ! 

 what complex results ! Individual, vital, formative energy enables 

 a simple cell, or a small organic entity, which we call a spore or 

 a seed, to elaborate and assimilate from the earth, or the water, 

 or the atmosphere, substances necessary for its own vegetative 

 and reproductive purposes, and when these are accomplished, it 

 ceases to exist, or it continues for a season in a dormant condi- 

 tion. 



There is no real, nor actual, nor palpable metamorphosis nor 

 change, neither in animals nor in plants. A leaf never becomes 

 a stem nor a pericarp. No physiologist nor morphologist makes 

 this assertion ; he only means to state that the material or tis- 

 sues which under one series of causes would have produced leaves, 

 under another will produce stamens, or petals, or pericarps. 

 Every plant, and animal too for that matter, is composed of cer- 

 tain tissues which in the seed or spore are of a very simple uni- 

 form character. 



If the morphologist does not mean this, it may surely be per- 

 mitted us to ask what he does mean. The physiologist tells us 

 that the simplest of the tissues, the cell, is so modified by idio- 

 syncratic energy that all the tissues are referable to it ; and, by 

 the modification of these tissues, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and 

 fruit are produced. It surely needs no ghost to tell us this ! for 

 of what else could they be produced ? Has the morphologist any 

 mystic or latent sense lurking under his terminology ? People 

 may be excused for wishing to know what is the esoteric doctrine. 

 They know the exoteric. All tissues are analogous in vegetables 

 derived from the primordial reproductive matter and from the 

 various materials which it absorbs and assimilates, as animal 

 nutriment taken into the stomach is converted into blood, etc., 

 undergoing a chemical change, and becoming fluid, solid, fibrous, 

 gristly, osseous, integumentary, carneous, etc. These may be 



