T. STERRT HUTSTT. 39-(9) 



Physiology or Natural Philosophy, the Physiophiloso- 

 phy of some writers. 



From the foregoing analysis it will be apparent thai 

 each one of the three great kingdoms of nature has its 

 physiology as well as its physiography; that we cannot 

 with propriety restrict the former term to the organic 

 world, but that while we speak of vegetable and animal 

 physiology we must also recognize a physiology of the 

 inorganic world. Apart from the consideration that 

 many of the processes which are generally comprehended 

 under the head of organic physiology are the same with 

 those exhibited by the inorganic world, being essentially 

 dynamical or chemical in their characters, it can be shown 

 that the various processes of the mineral world present 

 many analogies with those of organic life, and these it 

 is which may be appropriately said to belong to the 

 domain of mineral physiology. More than this, these 

 physiological processes are often so connected with the 

 organic world on the one side and the inorganic on the 

 other, that they appear as necessary and contiguous 

 links in the great chain of terrestrial activities. 



The growing plant gathers from the earth, the air and 

 the waters the mineral elements which, in its laboratory, 

 are converted into more complex chemical species, and 

 these, in their turn, are transformed into stem, foliage, 

 flower and fruit. The compounds thus elaborated in the 

 vegetable organism may become the food of herbivora, 

 and through these indirectly make part of the bodies of 

 carnivorous animals or of man himself. Sooner or later, 

 however, the plant or the animal, in obedience to the 

 universal law of change and decay, is once more resolved 

 into inorganic forms, which are ready to enter again into 

 the round of the organic circulation. The organism re- 

 verts to dust, or rather, except a small proportion of 

 earthly matters, to the atmosphere; which, as has been 

 happily said, is the cradle of the plant and the grave of 

 the animal. Such, in brief, are the processes of the or- 

 ganic world and their relation to inorganic nature, which, 

 viewed from the standpoint of the chemist, appear as 

 metamorphoses of the mineral world through the inter- 

 vention of organisms. There are, however, other great 

 and important processes of transformation and distribu- 

 tion in mineral matter in which the organic world does 



