ANNUAL ADDRESS, MDCCCLXXI. 21 



dependent upon it for its continuance ; for animal life 

 cannot maintain itself directly on inorganic or mineral 

 matter, but on that matter by the medium of the vege- 

 table creation, which has the power of transmuting mere 

 brute matter into organized. And although in creation 

 there is a prodigality of life, such relations obtain between 

 animals and plants of all grades as to prevent, to the 

 greatest possible extent, the degradation of the once vital- 

 ized material, whether animal or vegetable, into an in- 

 organic or mineral shape. 



When solution and disintegration have proceeded nu a 

 mass of organized material which has escaped utilization 

 by some higher grade of life, to the uttermost point short 

 of decomposition into its chemical elements, its salts and 

 gases, the microscopic beings, which have of old been 

 collectively described as infusoria, come upon the scene 

 and rescue the particles from the impending retrograde 

 metamorphosis. The drop of water that holds organic 

 matter in ever so small amount in suspension has its 

 miscroscopic inhabitants, carrying on in the extremest sim- 

 plicity most of the functions of life possessed by the 

 higher orders of creation. Their range in size is as great 

 as, or greater than, that among animals cognizant to or- 

 dinary vision. The larger prey upon the smaller, and 

 these upon those minutest germs and particles of organic 

 matter to which I have alluded. At the same time the 

 drop of water is a laboratory in which organic matter is 

 being de novo built up from inorganic elements. It has 

 within it a vegetable creation of wide diversity in size and 

 appearance, and withal of much beauty, which draws from 

 it the material necessary to its development. In the ob- 

 servation of these minutest forms of life we tread on the 

 verge of creative energy in its greatest simplicity. We 



