The stream of life on our globe ... as revealed by modern discoveries in geology and palæontology

interest from its long-drawn traditions and its ancient origin, while it appeals at once to the shepherd who watches the stars and the noblest intellects. "It has challenged the admiration of all ages. Poets, philosophers, and historians have all given it their highest encomiums, and kings themselves have enriched it with their labours." Yet this noble science is becoming year after year more obscure for those who cannot afford to abandon everything in order to master it, and this chiefly because it is overloaded with terms.

It will be said that I have been as sparing of stops and capitals as of greek and latin. I admit the charge and plead justification; I think authority and taste are on my side. Grimm in his noble work on grammar threw out capitals altogether except at the beginning of sentences, and some of the most elegant of the modern french writers have gone nearly as far. Except for proper names they are useless to readers who reflect at all, and are simply a relic of an ignorant age, when few men read and still fewer were familiar with the subjects they read of. Benjamin Franklin deplored the decline of the good old custom of writing all substantives with capitals, but I never could make out when this custom was followed; and a man who cannot tell a substantive from an adjective without such help as this, had better try whether he can't learn to do so. As to stops I believe men find that they can read modern works, though these contain far fewer commas and semicolons, quite as easily as older ones. Some of the german writers have very justly censured our unreasoning system of punctuation, and I could quote authority enough against the abuse of stops, did I not think that authority is hardly needed to decide a question of taste, or to justify an author in expunging what he thinks will only fatigue the eye and distract the attention.

I have often been asked if I could name a work which would enable a person not minutely acquainted with anatomy and physiology to understand something of the great

processes of life, without its being necessary to wade through the more obscure parts of physiology. I could only reply that for anything I knew to the contrary such works might exist, but that I never saw one. When searching authorities for my own purpose I found that books professedly devoted to such subjects, books written by the hands of Mayo, Wagner, Müller, and Hunter yielded less than I expected in the particular field I had chosen, and consequently I did not feel very sanguine that works compiled from them would supply the want any better. I have therefore essayed a sketch of physiology, but one drawn up with so little regard to established rules, that most of the scraps and gatherings which the reader will find in it, were gleaned rather from half-forgotten fields and hiding-places of learning, than from respectable authorities and wellarranged catalogues. With only such materials before me I do not profess to write scientifically. I took up the subject solely with a view of arranging a few stray facts and papers, which if they could throw no light upon it might give it something like a form and a name. From the very first I looked upon myself as a trespasser upon the hereditary estate of the philosopher, who if detected could only expect to be treated as a poacher. The reader therefore who is in search of profound learning had better seek it elsewhere, as I plainly warn him that he will not find it in these pages, and that if he looks for what I do not profess to offer, he will only lose his time.

Like a little and old-fashioned cabinet of curiosities, the sketch of the law of life must necessarily show incomplete in every part to the eye of those accustomed to delight in scientific-looking lexicons and well-arranged essays. This was however done designedly. The subject is rather apt to disgust in the most inviting form, and if over-freighted with ever so little dry learning and refractory terms, would have sunk a bettercraft than mine. If however I have made the leading outline clear, I shall pass by everything else with a good

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conscience, as the old greek sculptors when they were satisfied with the figure, neglected the accessories.

That books do not teach physiology as the general reader would like to have it laid before him, is the sum and substance of what I hear. Men are here in the same position as with respect to geology. They want to know what physiology can teach them, without running the gauntlet of minute anatomy and organic chemistry through text books and manuals eight hundred pages thick; especially as those who are persevering enough to face such a formidable phalanx of learning, report that in these works, though replete with high class information, the living spirit of physiology is buried under an incubus of details, which it as vainly strives to throw off as a buried Titan does his mountain sepulchre. This is like describing every brick and pane of glass in a building but telling us nothing of its inmates and traditions, its old historical recollections and how it looked in bygone times. "There is," says Lord Bacon speaking of the abundant supply of this kind of learning and the dearth of real teaching, "a a mere and deep silence touching the nature and operations of these common adjuncts of things as in nature."

For these reasons then I have ventured to offer a sketch of the history of life and made an attempt to trace its laws. I do not profess to dive beneath the surface of the current but to point out its course. I have weighed the risk of endeavouring to follow in the path so ably trodden by Johnston and Wilson, Ansted and Miller, and have resolved to run it, taking both for my excuse and motto the pithy words of an old and half forgotten "maker:"

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