172 report — 1859. 



apparatus, calculated for the purpose of isolating and defining external impressions, 

 and of transmitting them ; 2ndly, a conductor of nerve, whose peripheral expansion 

 communicates with the mechanical apparatus, the other extremity terminating in 

 the brain, or being in direct communication with it. 



3. Respecting function, they are all destined to convey impressions of the pro- 

 perties of matter from the outer material world to the mind ; each impression being 

 received by the mechanical apparatus, and transmitted to the nervous conductor, 

 which conveys it on to the brain. 



4. The reception and communication of an impression by the mechanical apparatus 

 is capable of the clearest demonstration in all its details ; its further transmission by 

 the nervous conductor is ascertained, but the mode is not understood ; and all phy- 

 sical trace of it absolutely ceases where the nervous conductor terminates. At this 

 point it is materially and outwardly lost, but is instantly recognized inwardly and 

 mentally. 



5. The mind has a separate power or faculty of receiving each of the elementary 

 impressions presented to it by the outward organs of the senses. Each impression 

 pertains exclusively to one sense only ; and with each sense is connected corre- 

 sponding mental faculties for the perception of them. 



6. The sense of sight is connected with two faculties ; one for perceiving impres- 

 sions of colour, and one for the degree of light. 



7. The sense of hearing is connected with faculties for noting the tune and the 

 quality of sounds. 



8. The sense of touch or feeling is connected with faculties for the perception of 

 weight or resistance, and temperature, 



9. The sense of taste is connected with a mental faculty for receiving its peculiar 

 impressions ; and the sense of smell with another in like manner. 



10. All further impressions of the properties of matter are deduced by inference 

 from these primary ones, and are not directly perceived. 



On the Genetic Cycle in Organic Nature. By Dr. Ogilvie. 



Parental derivation is now generally allowed as the sole origin of organic beings, 

 and the subject of discussion among physiologists is no longer the admissibility of 

 spontaneous generation, but the nature of the derivation, in different cases, from a 

 single parent or a pair. The former mode of origin, by what has been termed 

 '* gemmation," or the " budding process," plays a very conspicuous part in the pro- 

 pagation of many of the lower species, while in others the two seem to graduate 

 into each other. In their usual manifestation they are distinct enough, in a func- 

 tional as well as in a structural point of view. The evanescent vitality of the sexual 

 elements, singly, strikingly contrasts with the enduring capacity for development, 

 characteristic of gemma?, and the structure of true ova is sufficiently peculiar to 

 mark them off from all other reproductive bodies; but in drawing any conclusion in 

 this matter, we must also keep in view the observations which have been made of the 

 occasional incipient development of unimpregnated ova — of the full evolution without 

 impregnation of bodies resembling ova, and in some cases undistinguishable from 

 them, as in Aphis and Daphnia — and particularly of the impregnation of some 

 germs ; while others from the same ovary, destined for the evolution of young of a 

 different sex, are developed without fecundation, as Siebold and others have shown to 

 be the case in bees and some other insects. These observations lead to the conclu- 

 sion that ova are essentially of the same nature with gemmae — only modified and 

 limited in their capacity of development, for certain special ends — rather than that 

 there is any absolute diversity between them. 



In their ordinary manifestation, however, the two modes of reproduction are 

 clearly distinct; and when they concur in the same species, the immediate progeny 

 is generally different, their succession giving rise to the singular phenomena known 

 as " alternation of generations." All cases of alternation are not, however, to be 

 regarded as precisely parallel ; and it is the object of the present paper to point out 

 certain differences, dependent on the period of the life-history of a species, in which 

 the process of gemmation is interpolated. Three stages may be distinguished in the 

 life-history — the Protomorphic, or that prior to the first appearance of the organiza- • 



