George. — On Watershed Districts. 119 



In this round of organic life there is no loss or destruction of material. 

 Plants take their C. H. 0. N. from the inorganic world, and having utilized 

 the elements restore them again to the source whence they were originally 

 obtained, either through the processes of decay, or through the processes 

 of animal life. So in like manner it is demonstrable that in the round of 

 life there is no loss of energy. The heat, the light, the electric force, which 

 plants, as it were, absorb to carry on their life, are not lost — they are, like 

 the material elements, transmuted into other forms — into mechanical 

 motion and chemical motion ; but the very compounds in the manufacture 

 of which the chemical action is expended — sugar, starch, fats, and oils — 

 are the main sources of the heat of animals, the very compounds by the 

 absorption and reduction of which animals are enabled to maintain a tem- 

 perature above that of the circumambient atmosphere. So, also, animals 

 which possess a nervous system evolve electricity. Our brain is a galvanic 

 battery ; our nerves are telegraph wires, conveying messages to and fro 

 between the external world and our consciousness, which, as it were, sits 

 behind the operating machine — the brain — receiving and sending messages, 

 manipulating the machinery, just as a telegraphist does with the ordinary 

 telegraphic apparatus. 



In this outline sketch, which I have endeavoured to lay before you, of 

 life and its physical correlatives, you will perceive that we have had to deal 

 with nothing but ordinary chemical elements, and ordinary physical forces. 

 As I said before, life is not an energy, it is not a force, it is not an entity. 

 When we analyse its processes we see nothing more than a series of actions 

 and re-actions produced by heat, light, and electricity, within a mutable, 

 unstable combination of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. 



Abt. IX. — Watershed Districts. County or other Division of the Country to 

 be determined by the Area of the Watershed. By. J. Eees George. 

 [Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 10th October, 1880.] 

 The subdivision of the country for representation and local government 

 purposes is a question that with politicians is generally decided in some 

 haphazard manner, and chiefly by taking the nearest river-bed as a boun- 

 dary, but is one that should receive more scientific treatment, and is there- 

 fore fairly open for discussion at the meetings of the Wellington Philosophical 

 Society ; and I propose, as shortly as possible, to show that the area of the 

 watershed of any district is the boundary that should determine such divi- 

 sions both for local government and representation purposes. 



