K K W PUBLICATION. 71 



NEW PUBLICATION. 



A treatise on the forces which produce the organization of plants, with an appendix 

 containing several memoirs on capillary attraction, electricity and the chemical 

 action of light, by John W. Dhapee, M. D., Prof, of Chemistry in the Univer- 

 sity of the oily of New-York. 



The title of this book and the high reputation of its author, 

 strongly incited us to give it an early perusal. We were wishing 

 also to furnish our readers with some abstracts from its pages that 

 we might be instrumental in awakening in thera, if need be, a 

 taste for a higher order of inquiry than is found in the ordinary 

 treatises on the physiology of organic beings. Probably no field 

 has ever been opened so rich in facts, so important in results, and 

 at the same time so attractive to the philosophic mind, as an inquiry 

 into the nature of those forces which produce organization ; and 

 if the mystery which hangs over the production of organic bodies, 

 if the secrets which belong to life are ever dispelled or revealed, 

 it will be by labors in this field of research. It is true that it is 

 not a new field, one that is just opened or just entered, for many 

 keen sighted men of former days, men profound in knowledo-e 

 and skilled in philosophic analysis have made those forces the sub- 

 ject of anxious and serious inquiry. That these inquiries have 

 been eminently successful we by no means assert. Surrounded as 

 they necessarily are with great and serious difficulties, partly from 

 the nature of the forces themselves, but mainly from the circum- 

 stance that they become known to us solely from their effects, it 

 can hardly be considered strange that they should have often ter- 

 minated unsatisfactorily, or without obtaining positive results. 

 Still those inquiries have been at least partially successful ; and 

 hence instead of losing their interest, they are at the present time 

 awaking and exciting more attention than at any former period. 

 The work of Professor Draper is divided into two parts. The 

 first is a compilation,, as we call it, of the views of modem phi- 

 losophers on subjects relating to the forces concerned in organiza- 

 tion, or those which have a hand in developing vegetable and ani- 

 mal bodies, as the action of the imponderables, light, heat and 

 electricity. The second part is made up of memoirs written at 

 different times and published in the journals of the day. Anion <t 

 them we find one on capillary attraction. Another on the various 



