448 
cular as well as every other kind of combination. Such considera- 
tions and facts must convince us of the error of endeavouring to 
place the source of special vital action in any particular form or 
arrangement of organic matter, whether fibre, cell, nucleus, or mole- 
cule. Each and all of these elements, the author contended, had 
their vital endowments, which re-operate on the others. But, inas- 
much as the molecular element is the first as well as the last form 
which organised matter assumes, it must constitute the principal 
foundation of organisation itself. 
The author pointed out that it was not his object, in directing 
attention to a molecular theory of organisation, to interfere in any 
way with the well-observed facts on which physiologists have based 
what has been called the Cell-theory of growth. True, this last will 
require modification, in so far as unknown processes of growth have 
been hypothetically ascribed to the direct metamorphosis of cell ele- 
ments. But a cell once formed may produce other cells by buds, 
by division, or by proliferation, without a new act of generation, in 
the same manner that many plants and animals do, and this fact com- 
prehends most of the admitted observations having reference to the 
cell doctrine. The molecular, therefore, is in no way opposed to a true 
cell theory of growth, but constitutes a wider generalisation and a 
broader basis for its operations. Neither does it give any counte- 
nance to the doctrines of equivocal or spontaneous generation. It is 
not a fortuitous concourse of molecules that can give rise to a plant 
or animal, but only such a molecular mass as descends from parents, 
and receives the appropriate stimulus to act in certain directions. 
In conclusion, the author remarked that the theory he had endea- 
voured to establish on histological and physiological grounds, is fully 
supported by all the known facts of disease and of morbid growths, 
which further serve to show that pathology, so far from being cellu- 
lar, is in truth molecular. 
2. Notices of Early Scotch Planting. By Prof. Cosmo Innes. 
The common opinion that Scotland was at one time closely 
wooded, is at least questionable, and some circumstances lead to an 
opposite belief : as, 
The careful stipulations found in the most ancient deeds, about 
giving or withholding a limited use of wood for building and fuel. 
