The Victorian Naturalist, 4. köide

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Field Naturalists Club of Victoria., 1888

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Page 22 - From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began : From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man.
Page 106 - ... though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, and capsula, without admiration. Can that Being (thought I) who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image ? Surely not ! Reflections like these would not allow me to despair.
Page 106 - I mention this to show from what trifling circumstances the mind will sometimes derive consolation; for though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, and capsula, without admiration. Can that Being, thought I, who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures...
Page 106 - Being (thought I) who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image ?—surely not! Reflections like these would not allow me to despair; I started up, and disregarding both hunger and fatigue, travelled forwards, assured that relief was at hand ; and I was not disappointed.
Page 24 - ... to an extent not hitherto recognised, exacting from every antecedent its equivalent consequent, from every consequent its equivalent antecedent, and bringing vital as well as physical phenomena under the dominion of that law of causal connection which, so far as the human understanding has yet pierced, asserts itself everywhere in nature.
Page 23 - Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred, and may yet occur in the heavens; though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins; the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn.
Page 27 - This fine old world of ours is but a child Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time To learn its limbs : there is a hand that guides.
Page 24 - The vegetable world, though drawing almost all its nutriment from invisible sources, was proved incompetent to generate anew either matter or force. Its matter is for the most part transmuted gas ; its force transformed solar force. The animal world was proved to be equally uncreative, all its motive energies being referred to the combustion of its food. The activity of each animal as a whole was proved to be the transferred activity of its molecules. The muscles were shown to be stores of mechanical...
Page 23 - What an enormous revolution would be made in biology, if physics or chemistry could supply the physiologist with a means of making out the molecular structure of living tissues comparable to that' which the spectroscope affords to the inquirer into the nature of the heavenly bodies. At the present moment the constituents of our own bodies are more remote from our ken than those of Sirius, in this respect.
Page 24 - ... eagle. This was the work of the physicist: then came the conquests of the comparative anatomist and physiologist, revealing the structure of every animal, and the function of every organ in the whole biological series, from the lowest zoophyte up to man.

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