genus (Oscillatoriæ) are found even in the boiling waters of the Icelandic Geysers. Of the latter (Calothrices) one species at least, Calothrix nivea, is very common in hot sulphur springs, and I observed it in great plenty in the streams running from the inflammable springs at Niagara.”* Some of the same genus, we are afterwards told, "diffuse life" "in the snows of the Polar regions," and on the "Polar ice."+ The creatures produced by Messrs. Crosse and Weekes, reproduced themselves, in the same chemical solution, by natural generation. If the solution was not strong enough to prevent this in the second generation, why was it too strong to prevent it in the first? Again, if the parents were produced by an electric shock, how is it that the pattern struck by the same mechanism and at the same blow, varied, in one case a male being produced, and in another a female? The air contains the eggs or germinal molecules of innumerable forms of animal life, capable of entering into activity whenever they meet with the requisite conditions. If the chemical solutions used by Messrs. Crosse and Weekes supplied these conditions, as was proved by life afterwards continued, the germinating of the Acarus depended only upon the question whether the surrounding air was freighted with its eggs. That this was probably so is shown by innumerable productions, without the aid of the voltaic battery, under similar conditions. Vitality may remain dormant for an indefinite period, * Dr. Harvey's Nereis Boreali-Americana, p. 6. † Ibid., p. 18. In ready to be awaked whenever the proper call arrives. piercing a well in Maine, forty miles from the sea, sand was dug up which must have been covered thousands and tens of thousands of years. It was scattered on the soil, and in the next season there sprung up the beach-plum, a tree peculiar to the sea-shore, whose seed must have been covered up with the sand. Wheat taken from mummies is well known to form now a distinct species. Flies, or insects which have been for years dormant in bottles, come to life on exposure to the air. Raspberry seed, taken from the stomach of a man who was buried seventeen years before, germinated when planted.* On the "development" hypothesis, these animalcules should be monads, or the rudimental types. They are the first blows of the "electric force" on matter. But, on the contrary, they are very complicated little creatures, neither "minute" nor "simple." "If," asks Mr. Walker, on this point, with great force, "Mr. Crosse could begin with the Articulata and create an Acarus which had no parent, why may not the Divine Power accomplish as much? If Mr. Crosse can form both germ and insect by the same process, why may not the Divine Power form both germ and mammifer?"+ § 274. Let us pass, however, to the remaining analogies relied on by the author of the "Vestiges of Creation." b2. The tad-pole "develops," he tells us, into a "frog;" forgetting this change is the growth of each individual of * Carpenter's Physiology, p. 75. the frog species, and not the progressive ascent of the species itself. It would be just as correct to cite the accession of individual beards as a proof of the "development" of the human race. c2. To the larva and the butterfly the same remark is applicable. d. The working bee, which may be transformed into the queen bee, on a particular change of diet, is merely an illustration of a bifurcate structure in a particular species. The character of a species, to be complete, must include all its forms; and from this aggregate, in order to be a development, there must be an ascent. Now, in the case of the queen bee, there is but a subordinate modification, not a general ascent. e2. Cultivated plants and tame animals. Here there is no development, but merely a modification; and the plant or animal, if excluded from human care, reverts back to its original type. After considering these points, which are all that the defenders of organic development have adduced, we may well concur in the position of Dr. Carpenter, "that no higher type has ever originated through an advance in developmental powers; for although various instances have been brought forward to justify the assertion that such is possible, yet these instances entirely fail to establish the analogy that is sought to be drawn from them."* Carpenter's Physiology, p. 869. See also on this point an interesting article by Professor Dana, in Biblioth. Sac. for 1846, p. 100-2. b. GENERAL PROPOSITIONS BY WHICH THIS THEORY CAN BE MET. § 275. a. No progressive cosmical development. There is no progressive cosmical development. The transformations of the globe, to which geology bears witness, were not symmetrical and gradual, but exceptional and convulsive, involving a break of continuity, and a new arrangement of the material before existing.* § 276. b. Premeditation preceded creation. There is evidence of premeditation prior to creation. Every prior type is an anticipation of that which is to succeed; all point back to an original comprehensive design and omnipotent and omniscient designer. "Enough has been already said," is the calm summary of Agassiz, "to show that the leading thought which runs through the successions of all organized beings in past ages is manifested again in new, in the phases of the development of living representatives of these different types. It exhibits everywhere the working of the same creative mind, through all time and upon the whole surface of the globe."+ § 277. c1. New forms of life introduced at distinct periods. We have specific proof of the introduction at precise periods not only of new forms of animal life, but of the reapplication of life itself. § 278. d. Advance sometimes broken by retrogression. * See ante, & 79, 173. Essay on Classification, p. 116. See ante, & 32-35. See ante, 8 78-9. See also Silliman's Journal, 1858, pp. 204–5. As the terraces of geology ascend, and higher types appear, this superior order is broken in upon by an increased number of abnormal and degraded shapes.* § 279. e1. The rudimental atoms themselves prove con trivance. The rudimental atoms are impressed to an eminent degree with the marks of a Creator. We have fifty-four or fifty-five substances which are indivisible and final, and which form the individual syllables of which the great book of nature is made up. But each one of these syllables shows a contrivance whose exquisiteness appears the more vividly as we contemplate the vast number of combinations to which they are adapted. First we have, as the marshaling agents of these atoms, three primary physical forces— polarization, chemical affinity, and cohesion. Then we find, as the manual by which these marshaling agents are to act, laws prescribing certain proportions, definite as to number and weight, in which alone these atoms unite.† In the august economy and simplicity by which these elements, in the various combinations of which they are capable, are made to serve the almost infinite purposes of cosmical creation, we may find additional reason for concurring in the remarks of Sir John Herschel :-" These discoveries effectually destroy the idea of an external self-existent matter, *See Hugh Miller, Foot-Prints of the Creator, p. 192, etc. See also the theological bearings of these phenomena very strikingly depicted by Dr. Bushnell, Nature and the Supernat., p. 208. Thus oxygen and nitrogen are constructed as follows:-14 of oxygen to 8 of hydrogen: 14-24; 14-32; 14-40. |