46 EXPERIMENTAL ORGANISMS. 



and each take up particles of brass and iron and steel, or 

 other substances entering into its construction, and deposit 

 these in the proper places, so that the several wheels and 

 other elementary parts of the mechanism should grow evenly 

 and regularly, and continue to work while all these changes 

 were proceeding, such a machine, it is true, would in some 

 particulars be like a living organism. Mr. Justice Grove 

 has recently affirmed* that "in a voltaic battery and its 

 effects," we have " the nearest approach man has made to 

 experimental organism:" but he does not show in what 

 particulars the voltaic battery resembles organism, and 

 until this has been done the statement cannot be received. 

 All organisms come from pre-existing organisms, and all 

 their tissues and organs are formed from or by a little clear, 

 transparent, structureless, moving matter which came from 

 matter like itself, but may increase by appropriating to itself 

 matter having none of its properties or powers. But voltaic 

 batteries do not grow or multiply, nor do they evolve them- 

 selves out of structureless material, nor, if you give them 

 ever so much pabulum in the shape of the constituents of 

 which they are made, do they appropriate this. Where, I 

 will ask, is the attendant who provides what is to be selected 

 by the experimental organism ? What then does Sir W. 

 Grove mean by asserting that a voltaic battery is the nearest 

 approach man has made to experimental organism ? Has 

 man yet made any approach towards the production of an 

 experimental organism? If any apparatus we could con- 

 trive developed all possible modes of force motion, heat, 

 light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and any num- 

 ber of others yet to be discovered that apparatus would 

 * " British Medical Journal," May 29, 1869, P- 4^6. 



