THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST 



Vol. XLII October, 1908 No. 502 



THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLES OF 

 CHEMICAL MECHANICS IN THE LIVING 

 PLANT. 1 

 F. P. BLACKMAN, M.A., D.Sc, F.R.S. 

 The Uniformity of Nature. 



Among the phenomena of nature man finds himself to 

 be one of medium magnitude, for while his dimensions 

 are about a billion times as great as those of the smallest 

 atoms that compose him they are also about one billionth 

 part of his distance from the center of his solar system. 



From the vantage point of this medium magnitude the 

 man of science scans eagerly the whole range of natural 

 phenomena accessible to him with a strenuous desire for 

 unity and simplification. 



By the unwearying study of special sections of this 

 long front of natural phenomena special guiding princi- 

 ples have been detected at work locally. No sooner has 

 this been accomplished than, in obedience to this desire 

 for continuity throughout, such principles have been free- 

 ly extended on either side from the point of discovery. 



Thus, the theory of probability, which dealt at first 

 with so limited an occupation as drawing white and black 

 balls out of an opaque bag, now is known as the only de- 

 terminable factor in such remote things as the distribu- 

 tion of the duration of human lives and the effect of con- 

 centration of the colliding molecules in a solution upon 

 the rate of their chemical change. Again, the principle 

 of evolution discovered among living things has been 



