THE 
EDINBURGH NEW 
PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 
The First Lines of Morphology and Organic Development, 
Geometrically considered. By Dy Macvicar, Moffat, N. B. 
Astronomy, though so old a science, is even to the present 
day content with being able to understand and to proclaim the 
laws by which the forms and orbits of the heavenly bodies 
are regulated. There are only a very few astronomers who 
have ventured on inquiries as to the mechanism by which 
these laws are realised and worked out; and that, by general 
consent, with very uncertain success. But naturalists, even 
already, although their science, compared with astronomy, is 
still in the period of its childhood, seem disposed to reverse 
this order of procedure. Naturalists, even previously to the 
discovery of the laws of biology, are bent on the discovery of the 
mechanism by which the forms and structures of living beings 
are determined, and by which they come to be what we find them. 
But in this undertaking, though gifted minds have bestowed 
themselves upon it, very little progress has been made ; and any 
solution of the problem of life in this way in the present day 
seems to me quite hopeless. In the following communication, 
the method of astronomy, the discovery and the application 
of laws, is retained. Nor the method only, the grand instru- 
ment of astronomical investigation, is also retained. It is 
proposed to explain the elementary forms and transformations 
of orgasms and organised beings by the aid of elementary geo- 
metrical principles. Ultimately an appeal to these principles 
is inevitable, and I think that the sooner it is entertained the 
NEW SERIES.—VOL XIV, NO. I.—JULY 1861. A 
