a change from a simpler order to others more complex."1 It seems that complex spiral leaf-order "is the result of condensation operating on some earlier and simpler order or orders, the successive stages of that condensation being ruled by the geometrical necessities of mutual accommodation among the leaves and axillary shoots under mutual pressure in the bud. It is supposed that the original form of leafarrangement was two-ranked; that this two-ranked form gave rise to forms with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, &c., ranks by sporting; that of the orders so formed, those with an even number, except 2, became whorled; and those with 2 or an odd number assumed an alternate arrangement; and that all orders have been subject to vertical condensation under the need of vertical economy of space.3 Some consider that the sun is the only source of the energy exhibited in all vital actions. It is more correct to say that life is peculiar to organism; the sun not giving it, but stimulating and favouring. Yeast will increase indefinitely when grown in the dark; and there are organisms beneath two or three thousand fathoms of water, almost if not wholly deprived of light. Aided by solar influence, the structureless colourless life-fluid infinitely transforms itself, groups the transformations into molecules so marvellously that, though the life-wave in two consecutive moments is never composed of the same particles, similar living creatures are continually and unerringly produced: this germ proceeding to the plant, that to the animal; but both, while agreeing in general parallelism and analogy, developing into different and opposing forms of structure. Some suppose that by means of electrical agency form is imparted to organisms, and that the leaves and twigs of plants all terminate in angles or sharp edges by electrical operation. Among Phanerogamous Plants a certain number of organs, either developed or rudimentary, is always present, and the 1 "Leaf-Arrangement of the Crowberry. Proceedings of the Royal Society," 1876, No. 172. Hubert Airy, M.A., M.D. * "Leaf-Arrangement of the Crowberry. Proceedings of the Royal Society," 1874, No. 152, p. 301. Hubert Airy, M.A., M.D. 'Leaf-Arrangement of the Crowberry. Proceedings of the Royal Society," 1874, No. 152, p. 307. Hubert Airy, M.A., M.D. 1 Peculiarities of Plants. 381 rudimentary are capable of development. Flowers, bearing stamens on one stalk and pistils on another, can be made to produce both. Where and when a new function is required, nature provides-not a new organ-but a modification of the common one by metamorphism. Some plants, if transferred to the sea-shore, produce thick fleshy leaves, the same plants placed in a dry hot locality get thin hair leaves, and out of the wild acrid sloe have been produced our rich variety of plums, peaches, and nectarines. Individual peculiarities are more accurately transmitted by non-sexual than by sexual propagation. When, for instance, a tree with stiff and upright branches accidentally produces down-hanging branches, the gardener, as a rule, must obtain a weeping tree by planting cuttings or slips. Seedlings would generally have the stiff and upright form. A species of Aloe is said to blossom once in a century, and not less wonderful is a bamboo that grows among the hills in the south-east of Mysore. The natives report that it seeds once every sixty years, and the product, marvellously abundant, is called bamboo rice. In the husk it resembles cleansed paddy, but is more like wheat. It is sweet and palatable as food, and more satisfying than rice. The periodic falls of this great and spontaneous abundance attract to the region not only men, but a vast assemblage of rats, birds, deer, pigs, squirrels. The decay of the plants dates from their seeding, and they fall about three years afterwards; by which period the young bamboos, that have struck root around them, attain a height of eight or ten feet. He is a presumptuous and rash man who professing to know all about these varieties and sports of life, having at one end of the series something infinitesimally less than a tadpole and at the other end a man, can assert "there never has been any insertion of Creative Power." We are fully warranted in considering that law, as applied to all phenomena within range of human observation, stands on an equal footing with the axioms of geometry itself; but as all phenomena are a continuity or extension of the invisible into the visible, and of the visible into the invisible, whatever we know is bounded by the greater unknown. We must ascend into that unknown, into the essences and inherent constitution of things, to find the true cause. For examplethe chemical composition and actual state of living matter is wholly unknown. It changes and dies as we try to analyse it; and the dead, not the living substance, is in our hand. It is probable that during the living state the elements are not in any ordinary chemical combination, that the causes of transformation reside in the lowest germs, and operate in every interval of time. The initial point, the start, is in all and everywhere absolutely the same: nevertheless, the organic energy must be essentially different. What surprises, variety of results, differences of structure, and of functions, are contained in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, those four elements of the living creature! Where man finds neither distinction nor difference, a great gulf is fixed which may not be passed. Where man finds invariable uniformity, there inscrutable energy works infinite variety. From a kindred close as of one family, emerge creatures which, as plants, are perfected in the tree; and, as animals, are glorified in man. "The greatest wonder Is, that to us the real true wonders can Become so common place, and must become so." LESSING. Offspring resemble their parents, but the similarity never amounts to absolute identity either in body or mind. The tendency to general likeness is constantly checked by an impulse leading to variety. Brothers and sisters, children of the same parents, are unequal from their birth. Many animals produce several young ones at a time; but all those young differ in size, colour, strength. Some divergences of child-organism are so great and striking as to be monstrous. There are no two individuals which can complete their life under quite the same external or internal conditions; and the difference first affects the functions, and then affects the form of the organism. On the same field depasture the sheep, the horse, the bird; but one turns his nourishment into wool, another into hair, the third into feathers: who knows how or why? To Pericles were born Paralus and Xanthippus; just Aristides produced the infamous Lysimachus; Thucydides, the powerful-minded, was represented Circulation of the Blood. 383 by the idiotic Milesias and the stupid Stephanos. What a difference separated Oliver Cromwell from his son Richard! Who cares for the children of Shakespeare, or regards the daughters of Milton? The only son of Addison was-an idiot. Evidently an unknown law does, notwithstanding, establish heredity. We talk of the wit of the Montemarts and of the Sheridans. Many celebrated fathers have sons of renown: the two Herschels, the two Colmans, the Kemble family, the Coleridges, and Sebastian Bach's musical genius descended to three hundred of his race. These are cases of transmission. The power of an organised germ to unfold into a complex adult, and repeat ancestral details in the minutest traits, even when placed in conditions unlike those of its ancestors, is a capacity we cannot yet understand. A microscopic portion of seemingly structureless matter contains such an influence that the resulting man shall, fifty years after, become gouty or insane. In the higher animals, every separate organ is a manifold structure, every organism is a complication of related organs, the whole having many relations to the internal and external worlds. Were changes made by blind fortuity, the chances against any permanent improvement would be as those attending the production of Milton's poem, "Paradise Lost," from the fortuitous upsetting of a box of unassorted type. Until the year 1824, it was thought that the blood of every animal took one definite and invariable direction. In that year, M. von Haselt, happening to examine a little animal, the Ascidian, found that the heart, after beating a certain number of times, stopped, and then began to beat the opposite way, reversing the course of the current. Professor Huxley says "I have myself timed the heart of these little animals. I found it as regular as possible in its periods of reversal, and I know no spectacle in the animal kingdom more wonderful than that which it represents-all the more wonderful that to this day it remains an unique fact, peculiar to this class among the whole animated world." Uniformity is evidently the floor of Nature's Workshop, for the tools and mechanisms prove that variety is aimed at as a beauty. Coral-formerly counted a sea-weed, which had the singular property of becoming hard when brought up from native depths into contact with the air—we know to be an animal, with stem and branches, and fixed to the soil. "It is a sort of natural co-operative store," one that buds and divides, a living thing laying numerous eggs. The young, coming forth from the eggs, have no resemblance to their parents, swim about until, having lost their cilia or hair-like filaments, they settle down in the sea bottom, or become fixed to the rock, and grow up like their parents. Here is a plant -no—an animal; the young go forth unlike their parents, in infancy, volatile; but, finding discretion betimes, build upon a rock. Other creatures have no infancy at all. Birds of passage, without chart or compass, find their path across the sea, even to a place six thousand miles away, for suitable food. True as the needle to the pole, are these birds to their right place and at the right time. Gallinaceous fowl are, even at the first, equipped with instinct, and their bodies are clothed with feathers, yet not like the adult. The fishes, Helmicthyidæ, have such clear crystalline bodies that the words of a book may be read through them. Fishes have no voice, yet that fish, the Amia, grunts in disapproval of the doctrine, "Nature in all things is uniform." Sundry of them, for no very obvious reason, ramble about on land, and one kind of fish climbs trees, and the squirting fish shoots drops of water at its prey, and seldom misses making booty of it. The Perca Scandens, a fish, is sometimes found scaling rocks, climbing bushes, and ascending trees. Mud-fish bury themselves, and remain dormant till the rains of the wet season set them free. Those synthetic types which comprehend in one the properties of several groups of life, and those embryonic changes by which the young both of plants and animals pass through comprehensive stages of existence belonging to other crea tures, prove that there are wonderful physical and organic changes strangely connected with some vastness which escapes us on every side. There intervene a series of intermediate agencies of which we have no knowledge, not a simple uniformity, but often a surprise, and the genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Science, |