| 1887] Comparative Chemistry of Higher and Lower Plants. 809° 
- In minerals, plants, and animals the same principles recur, 
though at each higher plane under more complicated conditions ; 
3 and any one who, on visiting the Hot Springs of the Yellowstone 
_ National Park, has seen the non-carboniferous gelatinous masses 
È 
ünder some conditions, may not replace carbon and become 
-living matter. Since Confervæ do live in these springs at high 
temperature, perhaps some such locality as the Yellowstone 
i may have been the birthplace of “a protoplasmic primordial 
_ atomic globule.” 
_ The impulse which directs minerals to masquerade as living 
_ Plants and animals often manifests itself, for example, in the 
a ferns called stag-horns; and orchids, disguised like insects, pre- 
i tend to be what they are not. When will all of these intricacies 
a of nature’s secrets belong to commonplace facts? The day is 
distant, And in the mean time my hour is drawing to a close; 
ra return to my first statement of the evolution of the chem- 
a 
assuming the forms of organized life will ask himself if silica, 
4 
S these so-called elements are compound, and if I have dwelt 
all upon this subject, in connection with plant-life, it is on 
a of the indisputably serious nature of the investigations 
” fa field. On listening to the following concluding remarks 
a lessor Crookes’s address the chemical evolution of plant 
wn eee receives an able ally. He says, “ We cannot venture 
amn positively that our so-called elements have been evolved 
of evi o eg matter, but we may contend that the balance 
th doctri - .. fairly weighs in favor of this speculation. . - - 
light ù ot evolution, as you well know, has thrown a new 
dio) P and given a new impulse to every department of 
ta leading us, may we not hope, to anticipate a corre- 
= wakening light in the domain of chemistry. I would 
“hvestigators not necessarily either to accept or reject the 
of chemical evolution, but to treat it as a provisional 
; keep it in view in their researches, to inquire how 
ce Aaa Rend., t. civ., 1887, p. 165, M. Henri Besquerel. 
yiee News, Jan. 21, 1887. 
‘vered before the British A. A. S., 1886. 
