172 DR ALISON’S OBSERVATIONS ON 
up. After what Lizsie calls the “ peculiar mode of attraction” which operates in 
living bodies, has led to the formation of certain organic compounds, these com- 
pounds lose their connection with living bodies, become liable to an infinite 
number of changes and decompositions, and thus give origin to an infinite variety 
of substances—generally of temporary duration only, because retained in their 
form by attractions of no great intensity—applicable to many useful purposes, 
but foreign to the inquiries of the physiologist. He is concerned only with the 
chemical changes which take place in living bodies themselves, and during the state 
of life; and the results of recent inquiries seem to me sufficient to shew, that the 
fundamental and peculiar arrangements of chemical elements there observed are 
less numerous, and the laws regulating them more simple, than they have usually 
been thought. 
In considering this subject, we are enabled, by the results of the inquiries of 
geologists and physiologists, to revert to the period of the introduction of living 
bodies into the world, and reflect on the conditions then assigned for their exist- 
ence. We are justified, by reason, in allowing the imagination to fall back on 
the time when this Earth rolled through space an inanimate mass; and if any 
minds, besides that of the Great Ruler of the universe, were connected with it, they 
did not hold their connection through the medium of any organized structure. 
For I believe we are justified in laying down these propositions as established, 
jirst, That the simply physical arrangements of this globe were completed be- 
fore any organised beings were created ; secondly, That vegetables were created 
and lived chiefly on the atmosphere, fixing large quantities of carbon from it on 
the earth’s surface, before animals were called into existence; and, thirdly, That at 
whatever time their existence began, either the first living being of every species, 
vegetable and animal, or the first ovum from which that being was developed, 
must have been formed in a manner wholly different from that in which any 
living bodies, at least of the higher orders, are now reproduced ; 7. ¢., that they 
must have been formed in a manner strictly miraculous, and, of course, beyond 
the limits of physical science. 
But although we cannot ascend higher, in prosecuting this subject, than to 
inquire in what manner the first plants, or the germs of the first plants, were 
enabled so to act on the inorganic matter around them as to extract from it the 
materials, first of their own growth and sustentation, and afterwards of all other 
organized beings,—yet in the inquiry, thus limited, important progress has been 
made. From the time when these nascent organized bodies sprung into existence, 
we must regard it as an ultimate fact, that they were endowed with the power, 
which all the vegetables that have succeeded them have exercised, of so modify- 
ing the attractions existing among the particles of matter, as to cause many of 
these particles from the air and the water immediately surrounding them, to 
enter into their substance, by their roots and leaves, or by the organs which soon 

