CHAPTER I. 

 GROWTH. 



^ 4S. Perhaps the widest and most familiar induction of 

 Biology, is that organisms grow. While, however, this is a 

 characteristic so habitually and markedly displayed by plants 

 and animals, as to be carelessly thought peculiar to them, 

 it is really not so. Under appropriate conditions, increase of 

 size takes place in inorganic aggregates, as well as in organic 

 aggregates. Crystals grow ; and often far more rapidly than 

 living bodies. Where the requisite materials are supplied in 

 the requisite forms, growth may be witnessed in non-crystal- 

 line masses : instance the fungus-like accumulation of 

 carbon that takes place on the wick of an unsnuiFed candle. 

 On an immensely larger scale, we have growth in geologic 

 formations : the slow accumulation of deposited sediment into 

 a stratum, is not distinguishable from growth in its widest 

 acceptation. And if we go back to the genesis of celestial 

 bodies, assuming them to have arisen by Evolution, these, 

 too, must have gradually passed into their concrete shapes 

 through processes of growth. Growth is indeed a concomi- 

 tant of Evolution ; and if Evolution of one kind or other ia 

 universal, growth is universal— universal, that is, in the 

 sense that all aggregates display it in some way at some 

 period. 



The essential community of nature between organic 

 growth and inorganic growth, is, however, most clearly seen 



