Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 403 



assume as it grows. And the process is substantially the same in 

 animals and plants ; both absorb, decompose, select, reject, and 

 recombine. An animal may select what a tree rejects ; but so also 

 may one plant select what another rejects. None feed upon carbon 

 or oxygen alone. Some are not satisfied without drawing their 

 nutriment direct from the living plant or animal ; many feed upon 

 organic substances, in which the decomposition after death has 

 scarcely commenced ; and most, if not all, appear to require for their 

 support some small portion, at least, of matter in which life is or 

 has been. In both animals and vegetables the clock is wound up, 

 and it runs down ; in both, the atoms are separated and recombined, 

 and, in both, these operations take place in a totally different way 

 from what they do in the same bodies under the same influences, 

 the moment life is extinct, the moment the vital power ceases to 

 act. It is this vital power, its continuity and infinite divisibility, 

 its unity and infinite diversity, the concordances, discrepancies, 

 and reciprocal action and influences of the infinity of forms it 

 produces, that our Society is specially called upon to investigate. 

 As systematists, we have so to discriminate, describe, and class 

 these forms as to enable us readily to identify them, both in- 

 dividually and collectively, to comprehend one another and our- 

 selves in treating of them, and to retain and store in our minds 

 and books what is known of their resemblances, differences, 

 and peculiarities, of their influences and relations to each other 

 and to the lifeless world, as a starting-point for future obser- 

 vation. As biologists, we have to study life itself in all its 

 phases, and the multifarious influences by which it is continued, 

 preserved, multiplied, checked, injured, destroyed, or extinguished. 

 But, in addition, we must not neglect to learn from natural phi- 

 losophers what are those general forces which act on organic as 

 well as on inorganic bodies, and whilst carefully watching every 

 modification these forces undergo, when applied in combination 

 with vital power, gratefully accept any proved identity of action 

 in the living and inanimate world. 



ANALYSIS OF LANGITE, A NEW MINERAL FROM CORNWALL. 

 BY M. PISANI. 



Professor Maskelyne presented a short time ago to the Geolo- 

 gical Society of London some specimens of a new mineral found in 

 Cornwall, to which he has given the name Langite. It is a greenish- 

 blue hydrated subsulphate of copper, forming crystalline crusts and 

 small right rhomboidal prisms on a coarse argillaceous schist called 

 killas in Cornwall. 



The crystals of Langite are small and short ; by their union they 

 form macles analogous to those of Arragonite. Translucid ; lustre 

 vitreous. Its colour is a beautiful greenish blue, and that of its powder 

 a pale blue. Hardness, 3*5 ; specific gravity about 3'05. Heated 

 in a test-tube it gives water. Before the blowpipe, on charcoal, it 

 gives with soda a bead of copper. It is insoluble in water, but 

 soluble in weak acids and ammonia. Its hydrochloric acid solution, 



