152 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



in whatever sphere of work you may undertake, and beg your acceptance of 

 the accompanying microscope as a slight token of the regard and esteem in 

 which you are held by the members. 



Signed on behalf of the Club, 



Henry Thos. Tisdall, 

 15 th January, 1894. President. 



In acknowledging the presentation, Mr. Fielder expressed the 

 utmost gratification at the form the presentation had taken, and 

 traced any enthusiasm in his work to his association with so many- 

 active members. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



The following are the most important paragraphs of Dr. Cherry's 

 paper on the above subject, read before the Club on the evening 

 of 14th October : — 



INTRODUCTION. 



In giving a single paper on such a subject as "The Beginnings of 

 Life," I think it best to follow a somewhat different plan from 

 what I should have done had this been the first of a series of 

 lectures dealing with the subject. In the latter case one might 

 have gone into the facts in such a way as to have made the course 

 an introduction to the study of biology. But this evening all we 

 can hope to do is to select a group of facts every here and there, 

 and to hang from these a few pictures which will, I hope, give you 

 a view of the first principles which underlie the problems of the 

 beginnings of life. 



THE UNITY OF PROTOPLASM. 



The time has long since passed when it would have caused any 

 surprise to hear a lecturer declare that the ground substance of 

 which all living beings are built up is very much the same. Very 

 much the same, whether it exist in the form of a tiny spec only dis- 

 cernible with the microscope, or the tallest of our giant gum-trees, 

 or the great whale, or man who has dominion over them all. As 

 illustrating how closely all living things are linked together, I 

 may mention one or two points which bear upon man's relations 

 to the lower animals. Within recent years we have gone a step 

 further than cooking and eating them : we now appropriate parts 

 of them direct, without the intermediate stages of digestion and 

 assimilation. Suppose that from disease or injury a man has lost 

 a piece of skin or bone. We may take a piece of skin or bone 

 from one of the domestic animals, a dog or a cat for instance, and 

 transplant it; and if all the circumstances are favourable the 

 transplanted piece will grow, and ultimately become a living part 

 of the living human being. Take another instance. In the 

 front of the neck we have on each side of the windpipe a glandu- 

 lar body about as large as two of our fingers. It is called the 



