The Manifestations of the Principles of Chemical Mechanics in the Living Plant

Abstract

THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. Among the phenomena of nature man finds himself to be one of meclium magnitude, for while h-is dimensions are about a billion times as great ais those of the smallest atonis that compose him they are also about one billionthl part of his distance from the center of his solar system. From the vantage point of this medium magnitude the man of science scans eagerly the whole range of natural phenomena accessible to him with a strenuous desire for unity and simplification. By the unwearying study of special sectioiis of this long front of natural phenomena special guiding principles have been detected at work locally. No sooner haas this been accomplished than, in obedience to this desire for continuity throughout, such principles have been freely extended on either side from the point of discovery. Tius, the theory of probability, which dealt at first with so limited an occupation as drawing white and black balls out of an opaque bag, now is known as the only determinable factor in such remote things as the distribution of the duration of human lives and the, effect of concentration of the colliding molecules in a solution upon the rate of their chemical change. Again, the principle of evolution discovered amonz living things has been