The popular notions found among savage tribes as to the efficacy of certain remedies in the cure of disease have been the means of furnishing us with some of our most valuable medicines, indeed it is almost impossible to say whether originally man did not derive his remedies from the herbs and trees by an instinctive faculty impelling him, as it does the animals when in a state of liberty and with freedom of range, to seek certain plants as they avoid others. It is well known that animals when indisposed will find out some spot as if almost led to it by a visionary guide where the "healing plant" is to be discovered. I am told that sheep have this faculty, and that they will, when affected with the rot, feed upon some plant when they can discover it, which eradicates the disease. Almost every one is familiar with the fact that cats and dogs will crop herbage and eat it; I have {19} seen them frequently leave the house and proceed to the grass in the most business-like manner, partake of some quantity, and quietly return. A close observer of diseased animals might obtain some useful information by noticing the plants cropped by them while in that condition. The observations should be made in a variety of districts in consequence of the uncertain distribution of some even of the most commonly scattered plants; in one year they may be abundant, but in another they may be almost entirely absent from the same spot.[5] Were it only on the fact of reproduction, I would be contented to take my stand that the force of life is the indwelling power of pestilential matter. Reproduction is a law of nature, and the law of nature is the law of God. And where do we find He prevaricates with us? The more we study His laws the more harmony and perfection we find; what is seeming confusion in the ignorance of to-day, is order in the knowledge of to-morrow. If any one ignorant of the law which regulates the diffusion of gases were {20} told that a heavier gas would ascend contrary to its specific gravity through the septum in a vessel containing a lighter gas above the heavier, he would naturally doubt your assertion, and say, "that is contrary to the law of gravity;" but explain to him the principle by which this comes about, and the objects of the law; the order and beauty of the design become manifest. But this is no equivocation, it is evidence there, that subordinate laws exist and nothing more. It has never been found that men have gathered "grapes of thorns and figs of thistles," nor has it ever been discovered that inanimate matter multiplies itself. The seed of disease "is within itself," multiplying and propagating itself; whether it formed a part of creation at the beginning or not, is rather a question to be solved by divines than physicians. When we know, however, the latency of seeds and even of entire plants, and that they may be dried and remain so for years yet being brought again into conditions adapted to their active existence,