The British Cyclopdia of Natural History, Vol 1 of 3 Combining a Scientific Classification of Animals, Plants, and Minerals, With a Popular View of Eminent in Their Particular Department

Excerpt from The British Cyclopædia of Natural History, Vol. 1 of 3: Combining a Scientific Classification of Animals, Plants, and Minerals, With a Popular View of Their Habits, Economy, and Structure; By Authors Eminent in Their Particular Department

When the parts of a subject, whether formed of the same combination of matter, or of different ones, have a,local distribution, and a difference of function, so that the whole subject is not a multiple of any one of them,' but the aggregate of the whole, and has its properties as a compound being, depending upon the form and arrangement of those parts, rather than upon their mere chemical or mechanical properties as matter, then we call it an orgamp or organised being, the production, not of the common principles of chemical and ~mechanical action, but of life: which life, in fact, acts in opposition to the common laws of mechanics and chemistry and when from any cause it can so act no longer, the organic being. Dies, ceases to display any of the functions of organic life, and becomes an organic remain; and though, as such, some parts of it, as for instance, the bones and shells arelfound, not merely in accumulations of mud and rubbish in' a loose state but after they have been consolidated into rocks, there are always some parts of the organic structure which yield to the common laws of matter so soon' afterthe life is extinct that we can have no interval of time between them. The hard timber of the oak or the cypress may remain for centuries; but the sapwood, and especially the living body, intermediate between 'the bark and the wood, speedily perishes. The bones take some time to moulder in the earth, and they remain,even longer bleaching upon its surface, especiallyif the climate is uniformly cold; but the most anxious watchfulness can hardly determine whether the breath in the nostril, or the beam of life in the eye, is the first to vanish.

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