IIO GEOLOGICAL BIOLOGY. 



organisms. This fact is apparent to every one, and it is no 

 new discovery in this age. Naturalists have for centuries 

 known !hat animals and plants grew, and have been seeking 

 for some mysterious living property by which to distinguish 

 living form and living matter: they have been examining 

 dead organisms, they have described hundreds of thousands 

 of different organisms, looking always for, and in most cases 

 only grasping, the dead products of life ; they have examined 

 the organic mechanism and observed its mode of action and 

 the results attained : but it is only recently that, under the 

 names development and evolution the fundamental character- 

 istic of all vital phenomena has become an object of serious 

 study and investigation. The morphological relations of 

 organisms have been thoroughly studied, but their time- 

 relations have only begun to be scientifically investigated. 



