Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/271

 of the globe; and that the same forces or powers which govern inorganic matter are seen to prevail in organic beings likewise, combining and decomposing the various substances, regulating the forms and properties of organic tissues, but acting in these cases under complicated conditions yet unexplained, to which the very vague terms of 'vital phænomena,' 'operations of vital forces,' have been assigned, and which have been systematically grouped, according to analogies more or less happily imagined." (Compare also the critical notices on the assumption of proper or peculiar vital forces in Schleiden's Botanik als inductive Wissenchaft (Botany as an Inductive Science), Th. i. S. 60, and in the recently published excellent Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität (Researches on Animal Electricity), by Emil du Bois-Reymond, Bd. i. S. xxxiv.-l.)