304 REPRODUCTION OF ORGANIZED BEING. 



the action of each year is on a larger scale than that 

 of the preceding 1 year ; and the additions become 

 gradually greater and greater till about the middle 

 period of the tree's duration, and then they gradually 

 become less and less every year, till at last the ac- 

 tion ceases, and the tree dies. After that the re- 

 mains of the tree continue for a longer or shorter 

 time in the organic state, but they at last yield alto- 

 gether to the laws of inorganic matter, and mingle 

 with the general mass of materials for new produc- 

 tions. 



But there still remains the most curious part of 

 the whole matter, and that which forms the grand 

 characteristic of organized beings, when viewed, not 

 momentarily, but as existing in time. However sim- 

 ple the organization may be, it is so constituted that 

 it leaves a memorial behind it a monument of its 

 living action, as well as of its material substance ; 

 and thus, though the individual yields to that disso- 

 lution which is the law and the destiny of all created 

 things, and yields the more readily the more nume- 

 rous that its parts are, and the more delicate the 

 operations which they have to perform, the life is 

 continued. Not that it is absolutely secure proof 

 against every contingency ; for nature can separate 

 every thing that nature combines ; and as the suc- 

 ceeding race is intrusted to the world in the state of 

 an embryo, and depends upon the action of external 

 causes for its development into the matured being ; 

 a suspension of these causes, or a change in the 

 mode of their operation,, may cause the embryo to 

 remain inactive ; and if that happens in every in- 

 stance, the race may perish, either from any particu- 

 lar country, or from the world altogether. 



Those causes of more than ordinary dissolution 

 of organized being, whether vegetable or animal, 

 are very obscure portions of natural history. We 

 are unable to see them in operation, and the dead 

 remains have no story to tell, excepting only that 



