NOTES. 285 



even on animals, from the time in irhich they exist in the embryo 

 state Another fact, in support of the opinion that the dis- 

 tinctive forms of bodies are produced by electrical action, is, that 

 crystals, and the twigs and leaves of vegetables, all terminate in 

 points or sharp edges, so that the electrical action can proceed no 

 further in increasing the growth, or, in other words, in propelling 

 fresh portions of matter for the extension of the plant, or the crystal, 

 beyond the pointed or edged termination." 



(48.) Carpenter's Report on the Results obtained by the Micro- 

 scope in the Study of Anatomy and Physiology, 1843. 



(49.) See Dr. Martin Barry on Fissiparous Generation ; Jameson's 

 Journal, Oct., 1843. 



(50.) The reader will please to understand that this is only a 

 humble attempt to bring illustrations from a department of science 

 on which at present much doubt and obscurity rest. I have followed 

 the best lights that could be found, but cannot be assured that 

 better will not yet be evolved from the researches of the many able 

 physiologists now engaged in the investigation of ultimate structure 

 and of embryology. I am bound to admit, in the meantime, that the 

 identity of the globules produced in albumen by electricity with living 

 cells, and the fact of the reproduction of living globules, are both 

 doubted by physiologists of high character. In this, as in other 

 instances, particular illustrations may be held in doubt, or may 

 altogether fail, without necessary injury to other arguments. 



(51.) Article Generation, in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and 

 Physiology. 



(52.) Article Zoophytes, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7th edition. 

 A more general, but more arresting argument in favour of primitive 

 production, though not conclusively so, has been presented in the 

 following terms : 



" We see a simple germ the nucleus of a cell develop itself 

 into a feeling, moving, thinking man, by drawing into itself, and 

 combining into new forms, the particles of what we are accustomed 

 to call inorganic matter. These new forms are caused, by the very 

 act of combination, to manifest properties of a new and peculiar 

 kind ; and their actions constitute the life of the being. Hence we 

 must attribute to all those substances, which are thus drawn from the 

 inorganic into the organic mode of existence, a latent capacity for 

 the latter; just as we say that the oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and 

 nitrogen, which make up the organic substance termed muscular 

 fibre, and which, in that state or mode of combination, possess 

 certain vital properties, possess also a latent capacity for combining 

 in that mode of aggregation termed crystaline, and for exhibiting the 

 solubility, translucency, and other qualities of a salt (all of which 



