“An integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent heterogeneity, to a definite, coherent homogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.” Anybody who will think about this definition will be able to appreciate its meaning, provided a good dictionary is at hand. Evolution is not another word for Development, and Mr. Spencer has carefully distinguished the one from the other; but the details are too technical for notice in this paper. Evolution may be regarded as “a general term for the history of the steps by which any living being has acquired the morphological and physiological characters which distinguish it.” Development is “the process of differentiation by which the primitively similar parts of a living body become more and more unlike one another.” Both definitions are Huxley’s. The evolution of organic matter now claims attention in detail. Of the origin of first life, we know absolutely nothing. The doctrine of Evolution does not deal with that. There are, however, many hypotheses upon the subject. Lord Kelvin, the eminent physicist, has suggested that unicellular life may have been transferred to this globe from a wrecked planet. This hypothesis obviously aids us very little, for it merely transfers the original scene of action to some other world. Personally, I prefer the idea that the first protoplasm was produced by the action of the sun upon inorganic matter not unlike the colloids, and that it “fed upon the previous steps in its own evolution.” In this connection, I may say that two points are certain—viz., that vegetable life preceded animal life, and that the first forms of life were mere specks of jelly, without organs. Can these primitive specks be created at the present time? Or, in other words, can protoplasm be manufactured by artificial processes? The answer must be No; not by any process now known, although a great number of experiments have been made with the object of manufacturing unicellular vegetable life. During the years between 1870 and 1880, this question was thoroughly thrashed out, and at first the balance seemed to be very evenly held between the supporters and the opponents of spontaneous generation. The investigations of the late Professor Tyndall, however, conclusively proved that biogenesis, that is, all life from previous life, is the condition at the present day. But I must add Huxley’s words of warning, viz., “that with organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the qualities called vital, may not some day be artificially brought together.” And further, “that as a matter not of proof but of probability, if it were given me to look beyond the abyss of