plimentary rather than otherwise, since we presume upon his work becoming one of classical authority.

But, leaving this question of nervous fluid as one quite unsettled, let us pursue the inquiry into the particular mode of nervous agency. It has already been said, that the sentient organization, taken as a whole, presents three distinct portions. You have, first, the mass of brain and the immediately proceeding nerves; you have, secondly, the spinal marrow with its nerves; and you have, lastly, the great nerve of general commerce and sympathy. This last is especially characterized by its numerous ganglia; and although these bodies are found in other parts of the nervous system, yet, they are in far greater abundance, and differently distributed, on the sympathetic nerve. Bichat first taught, that there are two leading divisions, as to faculty and function, in the sentient frame, viz. the animal and the organic; the first being exercised mainly through the medium of the brain and its dependencies; the second having principally to do with the ganglia of the sympathetic nerve the ganglionic system influences, principally, the mere organic and involuntary functions; the central, the voluntary and intellectual. There is this further distinction, according to Bichat, between the manifestations of the one and the other; that the nerves of animal life have a centre and source, while the ganglionic system is so constructed as that each ganglion has a separate and, in some measure, independent faculty. Le Gallois differs from Bichat in opinion respecting the nature and extent of influence exercised by the brain over organic life, while Wilson Philip's views incline rather to a combination of both hypotheses: he supposes, with Bichat, that the ganglionic nerves are differently excited from the central; but, with Le Gallois, he looks upon the brain as influential, both upon the voluntary and the involuntary functions. In the former case, he conceives that the power to act, is transmitted immediately to the acting organ from a particular part of either the cranial or spinal brain; while to the viscera, the movements of which are chiefly involuntary, he imagines, that the sentient and motive influence is derived from every part of the brain, and is thus conveyed through the great chain of ganglia.

There does not seem much room to doubt, that the whole nervous system is, in some measure, called into play, in the manifestation of faculties. But, in support of the hypothesis which assumes a difference between mere organic or ganglionic, and animal or central life, it may be remarked, that those organized beings which are low in the scale of vi tality, are without brain, and are possessed of numerous ganglia.

And it may be further stated, that, in proportion to the strength. of intellect, is the largeness of the brain relatively to other parts of the nervous organization. It has been averred, that idiots among the human species are found, upon post obit inspection, to have the visceral ganglia of the great sympathetic much developed.*

We cannot follow our ingenious Author through the last section of the present proem. We always feel a little averse from physiology stretching itself out into metaphysical speculations; and it has been seen in one notable instance of modern times, what sad work organic philosophy makes, when it quits its own, and enters into other provinces of speculation. We must, however, in justice to Dr. Good, present the following specimen of his sentiments on the subject of mind.

⚫ of the nature of the mind or soul itself, we know little beyond what REVELATION has informed us; we have no chemical test that can reach its essence; no glasses that can trace its mode of union with the brain; no analogies that can illustrate the rapidity of its movements. And hence the darkness that in this respect hung over the speculations of the Indian gymnosophists and the philosophers of Greece, continues without abatement, and has equally resisted the labours of modern metaphysicians and physiologists. That the mind is an intelligent principle, we know from nature; and that it is a principle endowed with immortality and capable of existing after death in a state separate from the body, to which, however, it is hereafter to be re-united, at a period when that which is now mortal, shall put on immortality, and death itself be swallowed up of victory we learn from the God of Nature. And with such information

* Some very recent experiments made in France by Flourens and others, have been supposed to throw considerable light on the physiology of cerebral functions, and to prove that, while sensations acquire distinctness and durability through the media of the cerebral lobes, the spinal chord originates muscular contractions, and the cerebellum controls and regulates the voluntary motions. We may probably take an early opportunity of presenting to our readers a survey of these and other doctrines by which the physiological world is now agitated; and in that case, we shall be called upon to animadvert on the present dispute between Charles Bell and M. Majendie, respecting their claims to priority of discovery. For the present we shall only say, that philosophical ardour, in some instances, outstrips precision in reasoning, and that inferences are too largely and loosely deduced. All our experiments are apt, as above intimated, to overlook too much the fact, that injuries done to the brain, must more or less influence, by propagation, the whole organ; and that this injury must, in its manifestation, interfere with conclusions respecting the functions of separate parts.

we may rest satisfied; and, with suitable modesty, direct our inves◄ tigations to those lower branches of this mysterious subject that lie within the grasp of our reason.'

When treating on the sexual function, Dr. Good takes a somewhat extensive and by no means uninteresting survey of the theories of generation and the laws of organic propagation, from plants and the lowest order of animals, in which we find no distinction of sex, up to the highest class of animated beings. He opposes what has been named the sympathetic theory of conception, but admits, that there are difficulties connected with the subject, which have in no measure been lessened by the conceits of fanciful speculators. It must be sufficiently obvious, that we cannot do any justice to this part of the inquiry without going more into anatomical detail than is consistent with our plan; we shall therefore waive the discussion entirely, and limit ourselves to the following extract in reference to hereditary transmission and taint, with which the proem concludes. Having alluded to the difficulties attendant upon irregular and monstrous productions, our Author goes on to say :

Nor less inexplicable is the generative power of transmitting peculiarities of talents, of form, or of defects, in a long line of hereditary descent, and occasionally of suspending the peculiarity through a link or two, or an individual or two, with an apparent capriciousness, and then of exhibiting them once more in full vigour. The vast influence which this recondite but active power possesses, as well over the mind as the body, cannot at all times escape the notice of the most inattentive. Not only are wit, beauty, and genius propagable in this manner but dulness, madness, and deformity of every kind.

Even where accident, or a cause we cannot discover, has produced a preternatural conformation or singularity in a particular organ, it is astonishing to behold how readily it is often copied by the generative power, and how tenaciously it adheres to the future lineage. A preternatural defect in the hand or foot has, in many cases, been so common to the succeeding members of a family, as to lay a foundation in every age and country for the family name, as that of Varro, Valgius, Flaccus, and Plautus of Rome. Seleucus had the mark of an anchor on his thigh, and is said to have transmitted it to his posterity and supernumerary fingers and toes have descended in a direct line for many generations in various countries. Hence hornless sheep and hornless oxen produce an equally hornless offspring, and the broad-tailed Asiatic sheep yields a progeny with a tail equally monstrous, often of not less than half a hundred pounds weight. And hence, too, those enormous prominences in the hinder parts of one or two of the nations at the back of the Cape of Good Hope, of which examples have been furnished to us in our own island.

How. are we, moreover, to account for that fearful host of dis

eases, gout, consumption, scrophula, leprosy, and madness, which, originating perhaps in the first sufferer accidentally, are propagated so deeply and so extensively that it is difficult to meet with a family whose blood is totally free from all hereditary taint? By what means this predisposition can be best arrested, it is not easy to determine. But as there can be no question that intermarriages among the collateral branches of the same family tend more than any thing else to fix and multiply and aggravate it, there is reason to believe that unions between total strangers, and perhaps inhabitants of different countries, form the surest antidote. For, admitting that such strangers to each other may be tainted on either side with some morbid predisposition peculiar to their respective lineages, each must lose something of its influence by the admixture of a new soil; and we are not without analogies to render it probable that, in their mutual encounter, the one may even destroy the other by a specific power. And hence nothing can be wiser, on physical as well as moral grounds, than the restraints which divine and human laws have concurred in laying on marriages between relations; and though there is something quaint and extravagant, there is something sound at the bottom, in the following remark of the sententious Burton upon this subject: "And surely (says he) I think it has been ordered by God's especial providence, that in all ages there should be, once in six hundred years, a transmigration of nations to amend and purify their blood, as we alter seed upon our land; and that there should be, as it were, an inundation of those northern Goths and Vandals, and many such like people, which came out of that continent of Scandia and Sarmatia, as some suppose, and overran as a deluge most part of Europe and Africa, to alter for our good our complexions, that were much defaced with hereditary infirmities, which by our lust and intemper. ance we had contracted."

Our Author lastly treats of the excernent function. We do not feel satisfied that this is placed with propriety in the rear of all the others. Since it involves the especial characteristic of organic, as opposed to dead matter, (viz. the power of assimilating exterior substances into part of itself,) it would, we think, have been more in order, for assimilation and excretion to have followed immediately upon digestion, for the sanguineous and the respiratory functions to have succeeded, and for the nervous and generative to have closed the account. Life, however, with its attributes, is so completely circular, that, commence from what point you may in the development, something must in a manner be presumed as known, till the place occurs for fuller explanation.

An organized body is necessarily undergoing a constant mutation; and this, as above intimated, constitutes one of its prime characteristics. Dead matter continues to preserve its form and essence, without receiving any thing from what is around it, and without undergoing any internal changes,

beyond what temperature or mechanical circumstanee ope rates; for, when actual change is effected by chemical agency, the mass loses its identity, or becomes a different substance, It is not so with living bodies; they are momentarily and necessarily receiving supplies from without; are as constantly converting part of this supply into part of their own essence; and are thus maintaining identity through the very sources by which unorganized matter is deprived of it. By what agency is this effect produced? As the process of change supposes something given out, as well as something received, there must necessarily exist a secernent as well as an absorbent system; and the secernent function is indeed, in one sense, more complete than the other; since there are two kinds of separation to be effected from the general mass, one of matter which is useful, the other of effete substance: the exhalations from the lungs and surface of the body furnish examples of the latter, while the secretion of bile, and the cerumen of the ears, may be instanced as belonging to the former. It was at one: time supposed, that all the vast varieties of animal productions which are traced in the different secretory organs, whether wax or tears, milk or bile, or saliva, were formerly contained in the circulating mass, and that the only office of these organs was, to separate them respectively from the other materials that entered into the very complex crasis of the blood; whence, indeed, the name of SECERNENTS, or secretories, which mean nothing more than separating powers."

It is now, however, pretty generally allowed, that the secreting organs are possessed of a sort of creative power; and nothing is more surprizing in the whole of our mysterious organization, than the fact, that from precisely the same blood, two secernent vessels, which in some instances are mere follicles, shall immediately and simultaneously engender a different product. Who shall say, for example, from any conceivable principle beyond the ultimate law of final cause, why the surface of the body should pour out perspirable matter, while the membrane that lines the nostrils, shall secrete its peculiar fluid?-there being no more complication of structure in one case than in the other. And when, from mere terminal arteries and follicular organizations, we mount up to the larger and more complex glands, as the liver and the kidneys, we shall be still equally at fault, if we endeavour to explain results from organic conformation. But some matter, it has been said, is separated from, to be received again into the system. By what machinery is this effected? The anatomist has been able to trace small pellucid tubes in almost all parts of the body, and physiologists have inferred their existence even when the knife