LECTURE II. 



THE PAST CONDITION OF ORGANIC NATURE. 



In the lecture which I delivered last Monday even- 

 ing, I endeavoured to sketch in a very brief manner, 

 but as well as the time at my disposal would permit, 

 the present condition of organic nature, meaning by 

 that large title simply an indication of the great, broad, 

 and general principles which are to be discovered by 

 those who look attentively at the phenomena of or- 

 ganic nature as at present displayed. The general re- 

 sult of our investigations might be summed up thus : 

 we found that the multiplicity of the forms of animal 

 life, great as that may be, may be reduced to a com- 

 paratively few primitive plans or types of construction ; 

 that a further study of the development of those dif- 

 ferent forms revealed to us that they were again re- 

 ducible, until we at last brought the infinite diversity 

 of animal, and even vegetable life, down to the primor- 

 dial form of a single cell. 



We found that our analysis of the organic world, 

 whether animals or plants, showed, in the long run, 

 that they might both be reduced into, and were, in 

 fact, composed of the same constituents. And we saw 

 that the plant obtained the materials constituting its 



