Prof. Owen on Life and Species. 61 
generations of the first-created sarcode have descended to us 
unchanged from the period of the Laurentian limestone, other 
sarcodal offspring have developed and improved, or have been 
selected, into all higher forms of living beings. I prefer, how- 
ever, while indulging in such speculations, to consider the va- 
rious daily nomogeneously developed forms of protozoal or pro- 
tistal jellies, sarcodes and single-celled organisms, to have been 
as many roots from which the higher grades have ramified, 
than that the origin of the whole organic creation is to be re- 
ferred, as the Egyptian priests did that of the universe, to a 
single ege. 
Amber or steel when magnetized seem to exercise ‘selection;’ 
they do not attract all substances alike. To the suitable ones 
at due distance they tend to move; but, through density of 
constitution, cannot outstretch thereto ; so they draw the ‘ at- 
tracted ’ substance to themselves, If the amber be not rub- 
bed, or the steel bar otherwise magnetized, they are ‘dead’ 
to such power. The movement of a free body to a ss 
net has always excited interest, often wonder, from its anal- 
AM to the self-motion so common and apparently peculiar to 
ife.’ 
3 
B 
8 
Z 
5 
5 
2 
iB 
& 
ch 
oO 
3 
% 
6 
S 
= 
Pl 
by some 
meeba, we 
. . 
tances, the act of making contact seems as inevitable, as in- 
case 0 
_ amber or steel, gi ubstan- 
ces at due distance. : ae 
The term ‘living,’ in the one case, is correlative with the 
term etic’ in the other. Devitalize t 
“magni 
