forces, produce what has been called "Electro-vegetation; ;' and advance to the mysteries of vegetable and animal life.

The world, as a material organism, contains more than sixty-four known kinds of elementary atoms, several elements having been lately discovered. Possibly, these atoms, though we cannot convert any one into another, are compound, and were primarily one formless diffused substance. Mr. Crookes's experiments—taken in connection with a paper, read early in 1879, by Professor Osborne Reynolds, before the Royal Society-demonstrate the molecular theory. Mr. Crookes has, in fact, practically demonstrated a truth which Faraday only divined by the instinct of genius sixty years since. Faraday expressed the belief that matter might exist in four states, though we know it but in three. To solid, fluid, and gaseous he added radiant; and Mr. Crookes claims to show matter in this "radiant" state. His beautiful experiments, with their striking, and to the ordinary mind inconceivable, results, were one of the greatest attractions of the meeting of the British Association (1879). "The phenomena in these exhausted. tubes reveal," says Mr. Crookes, "to physical science a new world—a world where matter exists in a fourth state, where the corpuscular theory of light holds good, and where light does not always move in a straight line, but where we can never enter, and in which we must be content to observe and experiment from the outside."

Now we arrive at a startling result. So far from the elements being somewhat inadequate, or all used in the many singularly contrasted substances and results exhibited in Nature, only a few are largely present. As a mass, the outside contents of the globe consist of few elements: silicon, iron, aluminium, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine, carbon. Animals and vegetables are varieties, chiefly of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen. The broad ocean, throughout its vast bulk, is narrowed to two elements-oxygen and hydrogen; other substances are indeed a small part of it. Considering that the human body, progressing to suitable form and fit use for the genius of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, the piety of Wicklyff, is resolvable into a few elementary atoms, we discern that the

Calculating Machine.

399

band encircling natural uniformity and invariability of law is infinitely elastic.

It might be thought that the mathematical basis of the forms of matter necessitated such invariable procedure, and production of like by like, that the whole future could be calculated and formulated; whereas Mr. Babbage, in his ninth "Bridgewater Treatise," shows that we have no right to expect such invariable and fixed process. Deviations of the most startling character may co-exist with controlling law. A calculating machine can be constructed which, after working in a correct and orderly manner up to 100,000,001, then leaps; and, instead of continuing the chain of numbers unbroken, goes at once to 100,010,002, "The law which seemed at first to govern the series failed at the hundred million and second term. This term is larger than we expected by 10,000." The law thus changes :

“For a hundred or even for a thousand terms, they continued to follow the new law relating to the triangular numbers; but after watching them for 2761 terms, we find this law fails of the 2762nd term. If we continue to observe, we shall discover another law then coming into action, which also is dependent, but in a different manner, on triangular numbers, called triangular, because a number of points agreeing with their term may be placed in the form of a triangle, thus

I, 3, 6, 10. This will continue through about 1430 terms, when a new law is again introduced over about 950 terms; and this too, like all its predecessors, fails, and gives place to other laws, which appear at different intervals."

Such a process renders it evident that all calculations. beyond what serve for the immediate guidance of our life and practical reliance on Nature's uniformity, may be and probably are subordinated to some higher law which, at various seasons, interrupts and changes it. How then can any philosopher

assert-" There never has been, and never will be any intervention of natural laws"?1 There must have been an intervention, a series of crises, on the formation of elements out of primeval atoms; grouping and giving them powers as solids, fluids, gases; combining the inorganic; organising it, doing that which no chemist can-vitalising it; and building up the world in harmonious beauty. The development, whether by an almost infinitely extended process, or sharp abrupt, absolute, is inexplicable, except by intervention of an Inscrutable Power. During the historical era ordinary observation might discern no change; the procedure, with which we are acquainted, may have been uniform; but, in ages preceding, we know not what happened; nor can we, with certainty, forecast the future; the invisible and unknown are indisputably great factors in the universe. The particles of every substance belong to a vast number of systems, communicating with one another in a manner wholly incomprehensible.

We may think of natural variety in various other ways.

Well-nigh infinite change has been wrought since our planet began. No part of the surface is now, or ever has been at rest. There is a constant change in life, solar radiance is ever gaining or losing in intensity, the density and moisture of the air are continually increasing or diminishing. Take the molecular theory of gases-The particles fly about with very great velocity, impinge upon one another and against the sides of the containing vessel, thus producing what we call the pressure of the gas. At ordinary pressure, every particle has to move a distance, say, of something like 500.000th or 500.000th part of an inch, on the average, before it comes in contact with another particle, and is sent on a new path. The pressure may be decreased by partially exhausting the gas, so that there are fewer particles in a given space; or, by compression bringing them so much closer that, on the average, the particles are not more, say, than 10.000.000 th part of an inch asunder. The average square of the velocity of the particles corresponds with the energy of heat in the gas or its temperature. When a gas is so far condensed as to "Conflict between Religion and Science :" Prof. Draper.

approach the liquid state, its particles are scarcely ever free from collisions; in the solid state its particles are, practically, in a permanent state of collision one with another.1

We obtain by mathematical methods a faint conception of the complexity and mystery; for example: in a mass of hydrogen, at ordinary temperature and pressure, every particle has on an average 17,700,000,000 collisions per second with other particles; in every second its course is wholly changed 17,700,000,000 times; and the particle itself moves at the rate of 70 miles in a minute. In air the number of collisions is about half, and the velocity about one-fourth of that in hydrogen. In a cubic inch of air, in the ordinary state of the atmosphere, the number of particles is approximately about 3 × 1020, that is, 3 with 20 cyphers after it; and the effective diameter of a particle is not very different from one250,000,000th part of an inch.3

Careering amidst the tumult and storm, are minute living creatures hustling one another, or keeping out of one another's way, feeding and propagating themselves; in every room, not myriads only, billions exist.

We are told that distilled water is homogeneous, and a germ of life is absolutely structureless, because the microscope fails to distinguish difference or structure; but, in reality, even the microscope is blind as to these things. What shall we say then to skyey particles, so infinitesimally small that the minutest "vibrios and bacteria of the microscopic field are as behemoth and leviathan?" The diamond and amethyst have structure, but no structure can be detected; particles of water, changed so as to be diametrically polar, twist a ray of light, yet present nothing for the microscope to reveal, and germs of life, which seem absolutely simple, possess a complexity transcending our comprehension as it surpasses our powers of observation.

We hardly have patience with men who, knowing the world to be thus mysterious and utterly incomprehensible, full of things baffling and transcending human intelligence at every step, tell us -"there never has been any Divine Interference." "Recent Advances in Physical Science," pp. 245-247: P. G. Tait, M.A. 2 Ibid. p. 324. 3 Ibid. p. 317.

Divine Interference is continual-matter, life, intelligence, are as a garment of the Living God: shall He not move in it, lay it aside, or change it, as He sees fit? Commonest things manifest incomprehensible peculiarities. Take a cold highly polished plate of metal, place a wafer on it, breathe on the wafer when the moisture has disappeared, and the wafer been thrown off, no trace of wafer or breath will be seen; but breathe again, and a spectral image of the wafer comes to view. Tried again, after many months, the shadowy form once more emerges—a symbol of resurrection and life from the dead.

The farina of flowers appears to the naked eye like simple dust, but when magnified is seen to possess beautiful shapes of great variety, according to the character of the plant. Leaves are among the most delicate and gorgeous forms of Nature. The leaf of the Box is supposed to have 344,180 pores, and the back of a Rose leaf is diapered as with silver. "The Crowberry of our moors (Empetrum nigrum) habitually exhibits a peculiar mode of variation in the arrangement of its leaves on different parts of the same twig. Out of fifty Crowberry twigs, taken at random, only four (and these fragments) preserved the same arrangement throughout. In the remaining forty-six the leaf arrangement was found to undergo a progressive change in ascending from the base of the twig to the summit a change from a simpler order to others more complex." 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.2 It is supposed that the original form of leaf-arrangement was two-ranked; that this two-ranked form gave rise to forms with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc., 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

"Leaf-Arrangement of the Crowberry. Proceedings of the Royal Society," 1876, No. 172. Hubert Airy, M.A., M.D.

2 Ibid., 1874, No. 152, p. 301.