AND ANIMAL LIFE. 95 



ed for the adaptations, purposes, and circum- 

 stances of life, but must commence where the 

 crystallographist terminates; and, by attending 

 to this plan, we shall unravel the principles of more 

 perfect systems, which are concealed by parts of 

 secondary formation or importance, scarcely at 

 all essential to the exercise of these principles. 



LXXX. As it may justly be asserted that our 

 senses do not allow us to penetrate deeply into 

 the structure of organized beings, and, therefore, 

 we have no right to deny what we cannot de- 

 monstrate, we will leave plants and imperfect 

 animals, and examine the merits of the doctrine 

 in a manner altogether unexceptionable. 



LX.XXI. A few cases are on record in which 

 foetuses were born without brain or spinal mar- 

 row ; and yet these possessed external endow- 

 ments characteristic of the activity of internal 

 functions ; indeed there was no observable dif- 

 ference between such and others in whom these 

 organs are entire. 



LXXXII. The difficulty which this case pre- 

 sents being insurmountable according to the 

 principles laid down by this physiologist, he 

 says, " No writer, as far as I know, has attempt- 

 ed to explain the difficulty." He confesses that 

 his experiments do not explain it ; but he pro- 

 poses the following view : " If the nervous sys- 

 tem be galvanism, there may be some apparatus 

 in the uterine system for collecting and applying 



