THE TECHNOLOGIST. [Sept. 1, 1864. 



86 ON THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES WHTCH FORM 



possible ever to say too much regarding their amazing transforming, 

 transmitting, and metamorphosing powers. Into the question how far 

 their functions, as modifiers of matter, depend upon their vital, as dis- 

 tinguished from their mechanical and chemical endowment, it is un- 

 necessary to enter here. It is sufficient to notice that the power which 

 every blade of grass and green leaf possesses to resolve carbonic acid 

 into charcoal and free oxygen, and thereby to build up the most solid 

 vegetable tissues, chiefly out of air, is beyond the rivalry of all our 

 engines ; and this is but one feat among the thousands which plants 

 unconsciously perform, and in vain bid us repeat. Within the more 

 complex region of animal life, we are equally compelled to be mere 

 spectators of changes of matter which we very imperfectly understand, 

 and cannot effect by our machines. "We can scarcely, accordingly, rate 

 too highly the importance of living organisms, as working for us and 

 with us. Secondly : Although we cannot construct machiues to rival 

 sugar-canes and silkworms, or any other plants and animals, we have a 

 singular power of modifying these, so as to alter their actions as 

 machines. 



At every agricultural show, prizes are given to the exhibitors of 

 vegetables and animals, which differ as much from their protoplasts as 

 Watt's steam-engine does from Savary's or Newcornen's. So much has 

 cultivation changed our most highly-prized cereals, that it is matter of 

 dispute from what forgotten weeds wheat and barley, as we now see 

 them, have been elaborated. Our apples and pears were once sour crabs ; 

 our plums austere sloes : our turnips acrid radishes. We have as truly 

 created such fruits and vegetables as the chemist has created ether or 

 chloroform. The physiologist, no doubt, is much more limited than the 

 chemist as a creator, but he is as truly one. Both work under that 

 aphorism of the Novum Organon, which teaches us to conquer Nature 

 by obeying her. 



The creating power of the physiologist is still more striking as 

 exerted upon animals. Our dogs, and horses, and cattle we have made, 

 as truly as we have made glass, or bronze, or porcelain. Nature yields 

 no pointers among dogs, or race-horses among steeds, or short-horns 

 among cattle. Food and climate, regimen and temperature, domesti- 

 cation and training — above all, pairing in special ways — have given us 

 endless and important varieties of every creature we have cared to sub- 

 due ; aud whenever the whim prompts us to make pets of pigs, or 

 rabbits, or pigeons, we show through how many phases we can induce 

 our playthings or victims to pass. 



We do not generally call this creation, because we quickly realize 

 that we are but evolving certain germinal tendencies latent in the plants 

 or animals whose offspring our interference renders so unlike themselves ; 

 but we do no more when we call into existence glass or ultramarine ; 

 for unless the elements of these compounds had inevitably tended to 

 produce them under the conditions which we secure, the securing of 



