316 
Hartshorne. | [Jan. 19, 
the leaf and branch arrangement of plants, follows a spiral law, arithmeti- 
cally calculable, and showing a striking correspondence with the order 
remarked in the successive distances of the planets of our solar system 
from the sun, But what this phyllotaxis still more readily recalls to us 
is,—the helix of the electro-magnet ; or, rather, of the magneto-electric 
apparatus. As the opposite polarities of the magnet are to the current 
of the helix of wire, so may be—of course, we do not say is—sexual 
bi-polarity to the spiral phyllotaxis. While a spiral tendency or move- 
ment cannot be so clearly traced in animals, yet some indices of what we 
may call organo-taxis are not wanting. As opposite leaves are held 
to represent a double spiral, and whorls two or more, so the bilateral 
symmetry of vertebrates, articulates and some mollusks, and the whorled 
form of radiates and colenterates, may present or imitate results of a 
similar polar force. 
Another analogy, with which physicists may have more patience, is of 
a reverse kind, with heat. As a spark of fire sets burning an indefinite 
amount of combustible matter within its influence, so a spark of life 
vitalizes successively an indefinite amount of viable, organizable material 
as food. But the difference is, as remarked already, that while the in- 
crement of heat-force instigates the continuous reduction of less stable 
conditions of matter to those more stable, the increment of life-force 
elevates materials from stable into unstable substances, with constantly 
transmuted forms. 
To conclude: By no such crude analogies as these can any one imagine 
that the mystery of life is to be altogether removed. These remarks are 
presented mainly to suggest and show that inquiry into life-force and its 
attributes may now legitimately follow methods like in nature those used 
in studying the other physical forces; and to expand to some extent the 
germinal thought, that, while life or life-foree must yet be always differ- 
entiated from the other cosmic forces, it is, like them, a motion, or mode 
of motion, whose study is a part of physics—organic physics. 
I would add that such a view of the correlation of biology with the 
other physical sciences no more interferes with a theistic and teleological 
view of creation than does the (now familiar) resolution of many once 
called vital actions (as digestion, circulation, blood-aération) into chemical 
or physical acts, the results of ordinary forces of nature, which are collo- 
cated in the animal body under the conditions of vitality. To analyze is 
not to create, or even to show how creation was effected ; much less is it 
to afford a negation of the fact of creation itself. Yet, to analyze is 
always legitimate in science, so long as it is done accurately, step by step ; 
and this, whether it point to biogenesis or abiogenesis, to the origin of 
types by interrupted appearances or by evolution. 
The discussion of Mr. Price’s paper, read at the last 
meeting, being in order, Mr. Cope made the following 
remarks : 
