MEETINGS OF SOCIETIES. 393 
theory of submergence beneath great depths of water fails to 
account for the homogeneous quality of coal seams. Nor has 
biology escaped in the general hurry-scurry, but though richly 
endowed in itself, it too must needs make haste to keep pace with 
its fellows in the race. It is a seductive science, and one offering 
endless work with equal gratification to its followers; but it has 
suffered in the ‘“‘ house of its friends,” and its living witnesses have 
been hurried out ot court somewhat abruptly. Leaving on one 
side details and inferences, which are not free from mistakes, I 
would point out one or two principles at present held by many as 
sound and unassailable. First, it is assumed that we must take a 
plant or an animal just as we find it, and recognise nothing more 
about it than that it is a living machine or organism. But it must, 
I take it, be self-evident that the study of the life history of a 
living organism is incomplete and unscientific unless we tormulate 
first what we do know about as facts, and secondly what we do 
not know. In other words, it is our duty not only to inquire how 
an organism is constructed, and by what natural laws its functions 
are performed, but we must go further and find out, if possible, 
how it came into existence or came before the tribunal of science, 
and whence the laws which set it a-going and keep it a-going, To 
illustrate my meaning: A locomotive is a beautiful machine—an 
organism if you like—but you may put its parts together with 
faultless accuracy, put coal into its tender and fire-box, also water 
into its boiler, but it remains dead material and cannot perform its 
functions until man or the mind that designed it sets it moving and 
keeps it moving. So likewise among living beings, we do not 
exhaust their life history when we have discovered the laws 
regulating their nutrition and reproduction, or the methods by 
which their functions are performed. There remains the other 
part still demanding investigation. Did a mind design these 
structures, and does it maintain as well as originate the secret 
principle of life? Then there is another fundamental principle 
has something unsatisfactory about it, although its application has 
been ot immense assistance to biology. I refer to the order of 
classification of animals from the protozoa to the vertebrata, which 
is based, besides other facts, on the presence or absence of organs 
specialised to perform certain functions. That is, the lowest 
animals (so called) in the scale, have no special organs for the pre- 
hension and assimilation of food, or for reproducing their species. 
One portion of the body or mass fulfills the necessary conditions 
just as well as any other part ; while in the highest animals, as in 
man, we find organs set apart for respiration, nutrition, repro- 
duction, and for thought. Now an animal which without any 
apparent special organs can effect the work of prehension of food 
and other duties, must surely be a highly complex organism. At 
all events if a machine were built by any human being capable of 
performing halt-a-dozen diverse kinds of work simultaneously, it 
would not certainly be classed as a simple machine. It seems to 
me, then, that in our haste many things are being forgotten or 
overlooked, not only that relate to the phenomena of life, but to its 
Origin as regarded in biology; while the side-lights contributed by 
Sister sciences are often not contemplated at all. To quote a 
recent writer: ‘‘ The real difficulty in dealing with the problems 
offered by living beings arises, as it appears to the writer, from our 
ignorance of the nature and mode of action of that form of force 
which we have called vital force. As we have seen, the singular 
