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rhythmic changes, whether attended with motion or not, may seem 

 strange, are ( 1 ) that they are not continuous, but interrupted, and, as 

 it were, alternating between action and inaction, or between progress 

 and regress ; and (2) that they are very minutely observant of time. 

 But, in both these regards, they are examples of very general laws 

 of organic processes ; alternations of action and of rest, or of opposite 

 actions, being common phenomena of organic life, and all organic 

 processes being regulated with exact observance of time. 



In all organic processes, laws of time are observed as exactly as are 

 those concerning weight, and size, and composition. 



In the largest view, in that cycle of mutations, according to a 

 parental type, in which the life of every individual (at least among 

 the higher organisms) consists, the successive changes are accom- 

 plished with the same exact regard to time as to every other par- 

 ticular. The offspring at each period of its course attains the same 

 condition as the parent at the corresponding period had attained ; 

 the rules of weight, of shape, of composition, and of time, are all 

 alike observed in the reproduction of the parent in the offspring. 



And, within this view, we may observe how all the parts, or even 

 all the elemental structures, of any organism, keep time in its develop- 

 ment. Prematurity is, probably, even more rare than is preponde- 

 rance, among them. 



And so to natural death ; for rare as it may be, there is a death 

 even among men, in which, with uniform and synchronous decay, 

 all parts arrive at the same time at the stage of incapacity for work. 



It is the same everywhere. How evident is the observance of a 

 law of time in the organic phenomena of the seasons ! or, with more 

 minute regulation, in those of sleep and waking, not only among 

 animals, but, much more exactly, in the leaves and flowers of plants ; 

 or in their unfoldings ; or in the movements of stamina, the dehis- 

 cence of fruits and the like, whether in succession or coincidently ! 

 In all of these, occurring as they do precisely when they are neces- 

 sary for the welfare of the individual or the race, we may observe a 

 time-regulation of the organic processes, which, for its precision, 

 passes calculation. For though many of these processes may be 

 very dependent, as to the variations of their rate, upon external con- 

 ditions, and especially upon variations of light and heat, yet their 

 mean or proper rate is not explained by these conditions, nor is wholly 



