Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/269

 *tion, and from the fibrous arrangements of the elements. I term that an animated substance "of which the parts being separated by external agency alter their state of composition after the separation, all other and external relations continuing the same." This definition is merely the enunciation of a fact. The equilibrium of the elements in animated or organic matter is preserved by their being parts of a whole. One organ determines another, one gives to another its temperature and tone or disposition, in all which, these, and no other, affinities are operative. Thus in organised beings all is reciprocally means and end. The rapidity with which organic parts, separated from a complete living organism, change their slate of combination, differs greatly, according to the degree of their original dependence, and to the nature of the substance. Blood of animals, which varies much in the different classes, suffers change sooner than the juices of plants, Funguses generally decay sooner than leaves of trees, and muscle more easily than the cutis.

Bones, the elementary structure of which has been very recently recognised, hair of animals, wood in plants or trees, the feathery appendages of seeds of plants (Pappus), are not inorganic or without life; but even in life they approximate to the state in which they are found after their separation from the rest of the organism. The higher the degree of vitality or susceptibility of an animated substance, the more rapidly does organic change in its composition ensue after separation. "The aggregate total of the cells is an organism, and the organism lives so long as the parts are active in subservience to the whole. In oppo