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PARTICULAK CONSIDEKATIOXS 



r.ESPECTIXG THE OEIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 



The general likelihood of an organic creation by law 

 having been shown, we are next to inquire if science has 

 any facts tending to bring the assumption more nearly 

 home to nature. Such facts there certainly are ; but it 

 cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and 

 scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one 

 of nature's profoundest mysteries, and one which has 

 hitherto engaged no direct attention in almost any 

 quarter. 



Crystallisation is confessedly a phenomenon of in- 

 organic matter ; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck 

 ]>y the resemblance which the examples of it left upon 

 a window by frost bear to vegetable forms. In some 

 crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete ; 

 for example, in the well-known one called the Arbor 

 J)lana\ An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of 

 mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water ecpial 

 to thirty weights of the metals being added, a small piece 

 of soft amalgam of silver suspended in the solution, 

 (juickly gathers to itself the })articles of the silver of 

 tlie amalgam, which form upon it n cr //stall imtum pre- 

 cludj/ re.sfiiiblu/f/ ti s/tri'f'. \'cgctable figures are also 

 presented in some of the most unUnary nppcarauces 



