Sp 
1872.] 365 [Price- 
exist in the like proportion in the protoplasm of different creatures, 
which might explain much of the difference there is in their structure. 
Thus if the proportion of oxygen in the air was considerably increased, all 
life would be burnt up ; and if the proportion of nitrogen were consider- 
ably increased in the atmosphere we breathe, all life would be extin- 
guished, Without much more observation than appears to have been 
made, science cannot insist upon the sweeping generalization Dr. Huxley 
has made, that all living creatures are cognate. His facts are few, and 
the theory deduced runs counter to the common observations of men, 
Likeness in the looks of the white corpuscles, without showing of what 
they consist, or actually do, is not proof adequate to the induction. The 
ova in the ovarium of living creatures, and the initiate particle that vital- 
izes them, may appear much alike under the microscope; but from the 
ovum of one comes a fish, from another a fowl, from another a beast, and 
from another man. It is inferable that from the germ upwards the struc- 
tures of these creatures have had various elements and in differing pro- 
portions. Were it not so, creatures so diverse in form and nature, it 
seems not reasonable to believe, could be the result. This objection Hux- 
ley does not attempt to explain. 
Again, the different kinds of food that animals live upon show that the 
nourishment that feeds their life, in its first vitalized stage, called by 
Huxley protoplasm, must vary in the nature and proportions of its ele- 
ments. Some live on animal food only ; others upon grasses and grain 
only ; man upon animal food, grain and vegetables. Some can eat with 
impunity things poisonous to others. Some, too, secrete deadly poison 
from the material within them. The qualities of the things eaten or 
drank must enter into the circulation and growth, and these must furnish 
molecules or cells of qualities such as the body demands. Portions of 
food are to be rejected ; first without entering the circulation, and after- 
wards through the secreting glands, The breath of the drunkard shows 
that alcohol has entered his circulation and is exhaled from his lungs; it 
is shown in the capillaries of his face ; and by dissection, it is perceived in 
the brain. The nursing mother, who has taken medicine, transmits a 
portion of it to her child, by the milk secreted from her blood. Many 
medicines are administered with the view to their effect through the blood- 
circulation. These enter the vital current and produce their known effects. 
The cold-blooded and warm-blooded animais, the edible and poisonous, 
cannot be taken to be creatures of the same substance ; and though they 
may have been built up from a fluid circulation, it cannot reasonably be 
inferred that they have been composed of the same elements ; and if not 
of the same elements, the protoplastic theory to unify life becomes base- 
less: ‘All flesh is not the same flesh.”’ 
3ut if the vitalized ova and protoplasm that start and build up life 
were homogeneous, or approximately so, only the more wonderful must 
be the power of the life which can construct creatures of the diversity we 
behold in sea, or air, or upon the land, from the same elements. From 
