mae 
Prof. Henry on the Conservation of Force. 39 
furnished the carbon of the primeval forests of the globe; and 
that the power thus stored away millions of years before the ex- 
istence of man, like other preordinations of Divine Intelligence, 
is now employed in adding to the comforts and advancing the 
Eo So and intellectual well-being of our race. 
n the germination of the plant a part of the organized mole- 
cules runs down into carbonic acid to furnish power for the new 
arrangement of the other portion. In this process no extrane- 
ous force is required; the seed contains within itself the power 
and the material for the growth of the new plant up to a certain 
stage of its development. Germination can, therefore, be carried 
on in the dark, and, indeed, the chemical ray which accompanies 
light retards rather than accelerates the process. Its office is to 
separate the atoms of carbon from those of oxygen in the decom- 
position of the carbonic acid, while that of the power within the 
he results from the combination of these same elements. The 
orces are therefore antagonistic, and hence germination is more 
rapid when light is excluded; an inference borne out by actual 
t. 
8 in the case of the seed of the plant, we presume that the 
germ of the future animal pre-exists in the egg, and that by sub- 
Jecting the mass to a degree of temperature sufficient perhaps to 
