PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 71 



tlie later predominant calcareous masses, which are the 

 caput mortuum of animalized existence, we ascend from 

 the laws of attraction and repulsion, as united in gravity, 

 to magnetism, electricity, and constructive power, till we 

 arrive at the point representative of a new and far higher 

 intensity. For from this point flow, as in opposite direc- 

 tions, the two streams of vegetation and animalization, 

 the former characterised by the predominance of magnetism 

 in its highest power, as reproduction, the other by elec- 

 tricity intensified as irritability, in like manner. The 

 vegetable and animal world are the thesis and antithesis, 

 or the opposite poles of organic life. "We are not, there- 

 fore, to seek in either for analogies to the other, but for 

 counterpoints. On the same account, the nearer the 

 common source, the greater the likeness ; the farther the 

 remove, the greater the opposition. At the extreme limits 

 of inorganic Nature, we may detect a dim and obscure 

 prophecy of her ensuing process in the twigs and rude 

 semblances that occur in crystallization of some of the 

 copper ores, and in the well-known arbor Diana, and arbor 

 Veneris. These latter Bitter has already ably explained 

 by considering the oblique branches and their acute 

 angles as the result of magnetic repulsion, from the pre- 

 sentation of the same poles, &c. In the CORALS and 

 CONCHY LI A, the whole act and purpose of their existence 

 seems to be that of connecting the animal with the inor- 

 ganic world by the perpetual formation of calcareous 

 earth. For the corals are nothing but polypi, which are 

 characterised by still passing away and dissolving into the 

 earth, which they had previously excreted, as if they were 

 the first feeble effort of detachment. The power seems to 



