LECTURE II. 



THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC 

 NATURE. 



In the lecture which I delivered last Monday evening, 

 I endeavoured to sketch in a very brief manner, but as 

 well as the time at my disposal would permit, the pre- 

 sent condition of organic nature, meaning by that 

 large title simply an indication of the great, broad, 

 and general principles which are to be discovered by 

 those who look attentively at the phenomena of organic 

 nature as at present displayed. The general result 

 of our investigations might be summed up thus : we 

 found that the multiplicity of the forms of animal life, 

 great as that may be, may be reduced to a com- 

 paratively few primitive plans or types of construction ; 

 that a further study of the development of those dif- 

 ferent forms revealed to us that they were again 

 reducible, until we at last brought the infinite diversity 

 of animal, and even vegetable life, down to the primor- 

 dial form of a single cell. 



AVe found that our analysis of the organic world, 

 whether animals or plants, showed, in the long run, that 

 they might both be reduced into, and were, in fact, com- 

 posed of the same constituents. And we saw that the 



