“If a flower-bud be opened at a sufficiently early period, the stamens will be found as if moulded in the cavity between the pistil and the corolla, which cavity the antlers exactly fill; the stalks lengthen at an after period. I have noticed also in a few instances, that in those flowers in which the petals are imbricated, or twisted together, the pistil is tapering as growing up between the petals; in some flowers which have the petals so arranged in the bud as to form a dome (as the hawthorn; e. g.), the pistil is flattened at the apex, and in the bud occupies a space precisely limited by the stamens below, and the enclosing petals above and at the sides. I have not, however, satisfied myself that this holds good in all cases.” Without endorsing all Mr. Hinton’s illustrations, to some of which exception might be taken, his conclusion may be accepted as a large instalment of the truth. It is, however, to be remarked, that in the case of organic growth, as in all other cases, the line of movement is in strictness the resultant of tractive and resistant forces; and that the tractive forces here form so considerable an element that the formula is scarcely complete without them. The shapes of plants are manifestly modified by gravitation: the direction of each branch is not what it would have been were the tractive force of the Earth absent; and every flower and leaf is somewhat altered in the course of development by the weight of its parts. Though in animals such effects are less conspicuous, yet the instances in which flexible organs have their directions in great measure determined by gravity, justify the assertion that throughout the whole organism the forms of parts must be affected by this force. The organic movements which constitute growth, are not, however, the only organic movements to be interpreted. There are also those which constitute function. And throughout these the same general principles are discernible. That the vessels along which blood, lymph, bile, and all the secretions, find their ways, are channels of least resistance, is a fact almost too conspicuous to be named as an illustration. Less conspicuous, however, is the truth, that the currents setting along these vessels are affected by the tractive force of the Earth: witness varicose veins; witness the relief to an inflamed part obtained by raising it; witness the congestion of head and face produced by stooping. And in the fact that dropsy in the legs gets greater by day and decreases at night, while, conversely, that œdematous fullness under the eyes common in debility, grows worse during the hours of reclining and decreases after getting up, shows us how the transudation of fluid through the walls of the capillaries, varies according as change of position changes the effect of gravity in different parts of the body.