particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or 

 amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, 

 we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance 

 of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see 

 our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the 

 properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the 

 operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the 

 manner in which they are put together. Is the case in 

 any way changed when carbonic acid, water and ammo- 

 nia disappear, and in their place, under the influence of 

 preexisting living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the 

 matter of life makes its appearance ? It is true that there 

 is no sort of parity between the properties of the compo- 

 nents and the properties of the resultant, but neither was 

 there in the case of the water. It is also true that what 

 I have spoken of as the influence of preexisting living 

 matter is something quite unintelligible ; but does any 

 body quite comprehend the modus operandi of an elec- 

 tric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydro- 

 gen ? What justification is there, then, for the assump- 

 tion of the existence in the living matter of a something 

 which has no representative or correlative in the not 

 living matter which gave rise to it ? What better philo- 

 sophical status has " vitality " than " aquosity ?" And 

 why should "vitality" hope for a better fate than the other 

 "itys" which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus 

 accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inhe- 

 rent " meat roasting quality," and scorned the "material- 

 ism " of those who explained the turning of the spit by 

 a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chim- 

 ney ? If scientific language is to possess a definite and 



