396 NI COTIN A, AND ITS EFFECTS ON ANIMALS. 
.were exactly those best suited to the functions of the being. 
Hence we not only show intelligence evoking means adapted 
to the end ; but, at successive times and periods, producing 
a change of mechanisms adapted to a change in external con¬ 
ditions. Thus the highest generalizations in the science of 
organic bodies, like the Newtonian laws of universal matter, 
lead to the unequivocal conviction of a great First Cause, 
which is certainly not mechanical. 
“ Unfettered by narrow restrictions—unchecked by the 
timid and unworthy fears of mistrustful minds, clinging, 
in regard to mere physical questions, to beliefs, for which 
the Author of all truth has been pleased to substitute know¬ 
ledge—our science becomes connected with the loftiest of 
moral speculations ; and l know of no topic more fitting to 
the sentiments with which I desire to conclude the present 
course. 
“If I believed, to use the language of a gifted contemporary, 
that the imagination, the feelings, the active intellectual 
powers, bearing on the business of life, and the highest capa¬ 
cities of our nature, were blunted and impaired by the study 
of physiological and palaeontological phenomena, I should 
then regard our science as little better than a moral 
sepulchre, in which, like the strong man, we were burying 
ourselves and those around us in ruins of our own creating. 
But surely we must all believe too firmly in the immutable 
attributes of that Being, in whom all truth, of whatever kind, 
finds its proper resting-place, to think that the principles 
of physical and moral truth can ever be in lasting collision.”* 
PROPERTIES OF NICOTINA, AND ITS EFFECTS ON ANIMALS. 
By Alfred Taylor, M.D., F.R.S. 
Nicotina, says Dr. Taylor, the alkaloid of tobacco, is 
frequently but incorrectly called Nicotine . The final “ ine” is 
properly applied only to organic principles, the alkaline nature 
of which has not been determined; but this, like strychnia 
or morphia, is an alkaline base, and it should therefore have 
a terminal syllable which marks at once its true nature. 
Some writers describe it under the name of Nicotia. 
Having given the history of a case of poisoning by this 
agent in the human subject,heproceedsto describeitsproperties 
* Sedgwick, f Address to the Geological Society,’ 1831.' 
