557 
CHEMISTRY IN ITS APPLICATION TO AGRICULTURE AND 
PHYSIOLOGY. 
By A. S. Copeman, V.S., Utica, N.Y. 
C Continued from page 487.) 
Life presupposes the constant correlation of two indis¬ 
pensable elements, an organism and a medium, understanding 
by medium the whole of the surrounding circumstances 
necessary to the existence of the organism. From the reci- 
procal action of these two elements result all the phenomena 
of life. 
Seeing that the first transformation of inorganic into organic 
substances takes place in vegetable assimilation, and that all 
subsequent transformations into higher tissues are but modi¬ 
fications of that one process, it is clear that the elementary 
laws of assimilation may more easily be detected in the vege¬ 
table than in the animal world. 
Confining ourselves, as we have done hitherto, to the 
teachings of observations and induction, we have to ask this 
question : What is the form which, being universal, may be 
supposed indispensable to organic life ? Half the prosperity 
of philosophy lies in being able to put a definite question. 
Interrogate nature, and she will answer. She answers in 
this case emphatically, a Cell. The cell, or sphere, is not only 
the typical form of an organic being, that with which every 
organic being from the lowest to the highest commences ; it 
is the indispensable condition of the being’s existence. A 
cell is the whole of one of the simplest plants, such as the 
Proto coccus , and then there are large plants which are 
nothing: more than the association of myriads of such cells. 
The lowest type is thus a cell; the second stage in advance 
is an association of cells ; the third, a transformation of these 
cells into a tissue, but in one and every case the starting- 
point of organic life is the assumption of cellular or spherical 
form , and in consequence of these forms peculiar properties 
manifest themselves. 
The noveltv of this statement may startle, but what is it 
more than the mineralogist’s explanation of crystallization ? 
Just as the solution of a salt becomes a crystal only when its 
molecules arrange themselves in a determinate form, so does 
the blastema become vital only when its molecules arrange 
themselves in a determinate form. Not only is this assump¬ 
tion of a spherical form the last step in the process, but by the 
XXXIII. 59 
