Chapter IV: Part 4

Our attention is next drawn to the erratic blocks or boulders, which in many parts of the earth are thickly strewn over the surface, particularly in the north of Europe. Some of these blocks are many tons in weight, yet are clearly ascertained to have belonged originally to situations at a great distance. Fragments, for example, of the granite of Shap Fell are found in every direction around to the distance of fifty miles, one piece being placed high upon Criffel Mountain, on the opposite side of the Solway estuary; so also are fragments of the Alps found far up the slopes of the Jura. There are even blocks on the east coast of England, supposed to have travelled from Norway. The only rational conjecture which can be formed as to the transport of such masses from so great a distance, is one which presumes them to have been carried and dropped by icebergs, while the space between their original and final sites was under ocean. Icebergs do even now carry off such masses from the polar coasts, which, falling when the retaining ice melts, must take up situations at the bottom of the sea analogous to those in which we find the erratic blocks of the present day.

As the diluvium and erratic blocks clearly suppose one last long submersion of the surface, (_last_, geologically speaking,) there is another set of appearances which as manifestly shew the steps by which the land was made afterwards to reappear. These consist of _terraces_, which have been detected near, and at some distance inland from, the coast lines of Scandinavia, Britain, America, and other regions; being evidently ancient beaches, or platforms, on which the margin of the sea at one time rested. They have been observed at different heights above the present sea-level, from twenty to above twelve hundred feet; and in many places they are seen rising above each other in succession, to the number of three, four, and even more. The smooth flatness of these terraces, with generally a slight inclination towards the sea, the sandy composition of many of them, and, in some instances, the preservation of marine shells in the ground, identify them perfectly with existing sea-beaches, notwithstanding the cuts and scoopings which have every here and there been effected in them by water-courses. The irresistible inference from the phenomena is, that the highest was first the coast line; then an elevation took place, and the second highest became so, the first being now raised into the air and thrown inland. Then, upon another elevation, the sea began to form, at its new point of contact with the land, the third highest beach, and so on down to the platform nearest to the present sea-beach. Phenomena of this kind become comparatively familiar to us, when we hear of evidence that the last sixty feet of the elevation of Sweden, and the last eighty-five of that of Chili, have taken place since man first dwelt in those countries; nay, that the elevation of the former country goes on at this time at the rate of about forty-five inches in a century, and that a thousand miles of the Chilian coast rose four feet in one night, under the influence of a powerful earthquake, so lately as 1822. Subterranean forces, of the kind then exemplified in Chili, supply a ready explanation of the whole phenomena, though some other operating causes have been suggested. In an inquiry on this point, it becomes of consequence to learn some particulars respecting the levels. Taking a particular beach, it is generally observed that the level continues the same along a considerable number of miles, and nothing like breaks or hitches has as yet been detected in any case. A second and a third beach are also observed to be exactly parallel to the first. These facts would seem to indicate quiet elevating movements, uniform over a large tract. It must, however, be remarked that the raised beaches at one part of a coast rarely coincide with those at another part forty or fifty miles off. We might suppose this to indicate a limit in that extent of the uniformity of the elevating cause, but it would be rash to conclude positively that such is the case. In the present sea, as is well known, there are different levels at different places, owing to the operation of peculiar local causes, as currents, evaporation, and the influx of large rivers into narrow-mouthed estuaries. The differences of level in the ancient beaches might be occasioned by some such causes. But, whatever doubt may rest on this minor point, enough has been ascertained to settle the main one, that we have in these platforms indubitable monuments of the last rise of the land from the sea, and the concluding great event of the geological history.

The idea of such a wide-spread and possibly universal submersion unavoidably suggests some considerations as to the effect which it might have upon terrestrial animal life. It seems likely that this would be, on such an occasion, extensively, if not universally destroyed. Nor does the idea of its universal destruction seem the less plausible, when we remark, that none of the species of land animals heretofore discovered can be detected at a subsequent period. The whole seem to have been now changed. Some geologists appear much inclined to think that there was at this time a new development of terrestrial animal life upon the globe, and M. Agassiz, whose opinion on such a subject must always be worthy of attention, speaks all but decidedly for such a conclusion. It must, however, be owned, that proofs for it are still scanty, beyond the bare fact of a submersion which appears to have had a very wide range. I must therefore be content to leave this point, as far as geological evidence is concerned, for future affirmation.

There are some other superficial deposits, of less consequence on the present occasion than the diluvium—namely, lacustrine deposits, or filled-up lakes; alluvium, or the deposits of rivers beside their margins; deltas, the deposits made by great ones at their efflux into the sea; peat mosses; and the vegetable soil. The animal remains found in these generally testify to a zoology on the verge of that which still exists, or melting into it, there being included many species which still exist. In a lacustrine deposit at Market-Weighton, in the Vale of York, there have been found bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, bison, wolf, horse, felis, deer, birds, all or nearly all extinct species; associated with thirteen species of land and fresh water shells, “exactly identical with types now living in the vicinity.” In similar deposits in North America, are remains of the mammoth, mastodon, buffalo, and other animals of extinct and living types. In short, these superficial deposits shew precisely such remains as might be expected from a time at which the present system of things (to use a vague but not unexpressive phrase) obtained, but yet so far remote in chronology as to allow of the dropping of many species, through familiar causes, in the interval. Still, however, there is no authentic or satisfactory instance of human remains being found, except in deposits obviously of very modern date; a tolerably strong proof that the creation of our own species is a comparatively recent event, and one posterior (generally speaking) to all the great natural transactions chronicled by geology.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.

THUS concludes the wondrous chapter of the earth’s history which is told by geology. It takes up our globe at the period when its original incandescent state had nearly ceased; conducts it through what we have every reason to believe were vast, or at least very considerable, spaces of time, in the course of which many superficial changes took place, and vegetable and animal life was gradually developed; and drops it just at the point when man was apparently about to enter on the scene. The compilation of such a history, from materials of so extraordinary a character, and the powerful nature of the evidence which these materials afford, are calculated to excite our admiration, and the result must be allowed to exalt the dignity of science, as a product of man’s industry and his reason.

If there is any thing more than another impressed on our minds by the course of the geological history, it is, that the same laws and conditions of nature now apparent to us have existed throughout the whole time, though the operation of some of these laws may now be less conspicuous than in the early ages, from some of the conditions having come to a settlement and a close. That seas have flowed and ebbed, and winds disturbed their surfaces, in the time of the secondary rocks, we have proof on the yet preserved surfaces of the sands which constituted margins of the seas in those days. Even the fall of wind-slanted rain is evidenced on the same tablets. The washing down of detached matter from elevated grounds, which we see rivers constantly engaged in at the present time, and which is daily shallowing the seas adjacent to their mouths, only appears to have proceeded on a greater scale in earlier epochs. The volcanic subterranean force, which we see belching forth lavas on the sides of mountains, and throwing up new elevations by land and sea, was only more powerfully operative in distant ages. To turn to organic nature, vegetation seems to have proceeded then exactly as now. The very alternations of the seasons has been read in unmistakable characters in sections of the trees of those days, precisely as it might be read in a section of a tree cut down yesterday. The system of prey amongst animals flourished throughout the whole of the pre-human period; and the adaptation of all plants and animals to their respective spheres of existence was as perfect in those early ages as it is still.

But, as has been observed, the operation of the laws may be modified by conditions. At one early age, if there was any dry land at all, it was perhaps enveloped in an atmosphere unfit for the existence of terrestrial animals, and which had to go though some changes before that condition was altered. In the carbonigenous era, dry land seems to have consisted only of clusters of islands, and the temperature was much above what now obtains at the same places. Volcanic forces, and perhaps also the disintegrating power, seem to have been on the decrease since the first, or we have at least long enjoyed an exemption from such paroxysms of the former, as appear to have prevailed at the close of the coal formation in England and throughout the tertiary era. The surface has also undergone a gradual progress by which it has become always more and more variegated, and thereby fitted for the residence of a higher class of animals.

In pursuing the progress of the development of both plants and animals upon the globe, we have seen an advance in both cases, along the line leading to the higher forms of organization. Amongst plants, we have first sea-weeds, afterwards land plants; and amongst these the simpler (cellular and cryptogamic) before the more complex. In the department of zoology, we see zoophytes, radiata, mollusca, articulata, existing for ages before there were any higher forms. The first step forward gives fishes, the humblest class of the vertebrata; and, moreover, the earliest fishes partake of the character of the next lowest sub-kingdom, the articulata. Afterwards come land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universally allowed to be the type next in advance from fishes, and to be connected with these by the links of an insensible gradation. From reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class. That there is thus a progress of some kind, the most superficial glance at the geological history is sufficient to convince us. Indeed the doctrine of the gradation of animal forms has received a remarkable support from the discoveries of this science, as several types formerly wanting to a completion of the series have been found in a fossil state. {149}

It is scarcely less evident, from the geological record, that the progress of organic life has observed some correspondence with the progress of physical conditions on the surface. We do not know for certain that the sea, at the time when it supported radiated, molluscous, and articulated families, was incapable of supporting fishes; but causes for such a limitation are far from inconceivable. The huge saurians appear to have been precisely adapted to the low muddy coasts and sea margins of the time when they flourished. Marsupials appear at the time when the surface was generally in that flat, imperfectly variegated state in which we find Australia, the region where they now live in the greatest abundance, and one which has no higher native mammalian type. Finally, it was not till the land and sea had come into their present relations, and the former, in its principal continents, had acquired the irregularity of surface necessary for man, that man appeared. We have likewise seen reason for supposing that land animals could not have lived before the carbonigenous era, owing to the great charge of carbonic acid gas presumed to have been contained in the atmosphere down to that time. The surplus of this having gone, as M. Brogniart suggests, to form the vegetation, whose ruins became coal, and the air being thus brought to its present state, land animals immediately appeared. So also, sea-plants were at first the only specimens of vegetation, because there appears to have been no place where other plants could be produced or supported. Land vegetation followed, at first simple, afterwards complex, probably in conformity with an advance of the conditions required by the higher class of plants. In short, we see everywhere throughout the geological history, strong traces of a parallel advance of the physical conditions and the organic forms.

In examining the fossils of the lower marine creation, with a reference to the kind of rock in connexion, with which they are found, it is observed that some strata are attended by a much greater abundance of both species and individuals than others. They abound most in calcareous rocks, which is precisely what might be expected, since lime is necessary for the formation of the shells of the mollusks and articulata, and the hard substance of the crinoidea and corals; next in the carboniferous series; next in the tertiary; next in the new red sandstone; next in slates; and lastly, least of all, in the primary rocks. {151} This may have been the case without regard to the origination of new species, but more probably it was otherwise; or why, for instance, should the polypiferous zoophyta be found almost exclusively in the limestones? There are, indeed, abundant appearances as if, throughout all the changes of the surface, the various kinds of organic life invariably _pressed in_, immediately on the specially suitable conditions arising, so that no place which could support any form of organic being might be left for any length of time unoccupied. Nor is it less remarkable how various species are withdrawn from the earth, when the proper conditions for their particular existence are changed. The trilobite, of which fifty species existed during the earlier formations, was extirpated before the secondary had commenced, and appeared no more. The ammonite does not appear above the chalk. The species, and even genera of all the early radiata and mollusks were exchanged for others long ago. Not one species of any creature which flourished before the tertiary (Ehrenberg’s infusoria excepted) now exists; and of the mammalia which arose during that series, many forms are altogether gone, while of others we have now only kindred species. Thus to find not only frequent additions to the previously existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently become inappropriate—a constant shifting as well as advance—is a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention.

A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic creation from what has hitherto been generally entertained. That God created animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of their being, is a fact so powerfully evidenced, and so universally received, that I at once take it for granted. But in the particulars of this so highly supported idea, we surely here see cause for some re-consideration. It may now be inquired,—In what way was the creation of animated beings effected? The ordinary notion may, I think, be not unjustly described as this,—that the Almighty author produced the progenitors of all existing species by some sort of personal or immediate exertion. But how does this notion comport with what we have seen of the gradual advance of species, from the humblest to the highest? How can we suppose an immediate exertion of this creative power at one time to produce zoophytes, another time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two conchifers, again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on to the end? This would surely be to take a very mean view of the Creative Power—to, in short, anthropomorphize it, or reduce it to some such character as that borne by the ordinary proceedings of mankind. And yet this would be unavoidable; for that the organic creation was thus progressive through a long space of time, rests on evidence which nothing can overturn or gainsay. Some other idea must then be come to with regard to _the mode_ in which the Divine Author proceeded in the organic creation. Let us seek in the history of the earth’s formation for a new suggestion on this point. We have seen powerful evidence, that the construction of this globe and its associates, and inferentially that of all the other globes of space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of the Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also a result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his will? More than this, the fact of the cosmical arrangements being an effect of natural laws is a powerful argument for the organic arrangements being so likewise, for how can we suppose that the august Being who brought all these countless worlds into form by the simple establishment of a natural principle flowing from his mind, was to interfere personally and specially on every occasion when a new shell-fish or reptile was to be ushered into existence on _one_ of these worlds? Surely this idea is too ridiculous to be for a moment entertained.

It will be objected that the ordinary conceptions of Christian nations on this subject are directly derived from Scripture, or, at least, are in conformity with it. If they were clearly and unequivocally supported by Scripture, it may readily be allowed that there would be a strong objection to the reception of any opposite hypothesis. But the fact is, however startling the present announcement of it may be, that the first chapter of the Mosaic record is not only not in harmony with the ordinary ideas of mankind respecting cosmical and organic creation, but is opposed to them, and only in accordance with the views here taken. When we carefully peruse it with awakened minds, we find that all the procedure is represented primarily and pre-eminently as flowing _from commands and expressions of will_, _not from direct acts_. Let there be light—let there be a firmament—let the dry land appear—let the earth bring forth grass, the herb, the tree—let the waters bring forth the moving creature that hath life—let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind—these are the terms in which the principal acts are described. The additional expressions,—God made the firmament—God made the beast of the earth, &c., occur subordinately, and only in a few instances; they do not necessarily convey a different idea of the mode of creation, and indeed only appear as alternative phrases, in the usual duplicative manner of Eastern narrative. Keeping this in view, the words used in a subsequent place, “God _formed_ man in his own image,” cannot well be understood as implying any more than what was implied before,—namely, that man was produced in consequence of an expression of the Divine will to that effect. Thus, the scriptural objection quickly vanishes, and the prevalent ideas about the organic creation appear only as a mistaken inference from the text, formed at a time when man’s ignorance prevented him from drawing therefrom a just conclusion. At the same time, I freely own that I do not think it right to adduce the Mosaic record, either in objection to, or support of any natural hypothesis, and this for many reasons, but particularly for this, that there is not the least appearance of an intention in that book to give philosophically exact views of nature.

To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. It, for one thing, greatly detracts from his foresight, the most undeniable of all the attributes of Omnipotence. It lowers him towards the level of our own humble intellects. Much more worthy of him it surely is, to suppose that all things have been commissioned by him from the first, though neither is he absent from a particle of the current of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the whole system is continually supported by his providence. Even in human affairs, if I may be allowed to adopt a familiar illustration, there is a constant progress from specific action for particular occasions, to arrangements which, once established, shall continue to answer for a great multitude of occasions. Such plans the enlightened readily form for themselves, and conceive as being adopted by all who have to attend to a multitude of affairs, while the ignorant suppose every act of the greatest public functionary to be the result of some special consideration and care on his part alone. Are we to suppose the Deity adopting plans which harmonize only with the modes of procedure of the less enlightened of our race? Those who would object to the hypothesis of a creation by the intervention of law, do not perhaps consider how powerful an argument in favour of the existence of God is lost by rejecting this doctrine. When all is seen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty Author becomes irresistible, for the creation of a law for an endless series of phenomena—an act of intelligence above all else that we can conceive—could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a sustaining as for an originating power. On this point a remark of Dr. Buckland seems applicable: “If the properties adopted by the elements at the moment of their creation adapted them beforehand to the infinity of complicated useful purposes which they have already answered, and may have still farther to answer, under many dispensations of the material world, such an aboriginal constitution, so far from superseding an intelligent agent, would only exalt our conceptions of the consummate skill and power that could comprehend such an infinity of future uses under future systems, in the original groundwork of his creation.”

A late writer, in a work embracing a vast amount of miscellaneous knowledge, but written in a dogmatic style, argues at great length for the doctrine of more immediate exertions on the part of the Deity in the works of his creation. One of the most striking of his illustrations is as follows:—“The coral polypi, united by a common animal bond, construct a defined form in stone; many kinds construct many forms. An allotted instinct may permit each polypus to construct its own cell, but there is no superintending one to direct the pattern, nor can the workers unite by consultation for such an end. There is no recipient for an instinct by which the pattern might be constructed. It is God alone, therefore, who is the architect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of every new polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiar position, which the animal could not have discovered by itself. Yet more, millions of these blind workers unite their works to form an island, which is also wrought out according to a constant general pattern, and of a very peculiar nature, though the separate coral works are numerously diverse. Still less, then, here is an instinct possible. The Great Architect himself must execute what he planned, in each case equally. He uses these little and senseless animals as hands; but they are hands which himself must direct. He must direct each one everywhere, and therefore he is ever acting.” {159} This is a most notable example of a dangerous kind of reasoning. It is now believed that corals have a general life and sensation throughout the whole mass, residing in the nervous tissue which envelops them; consequently, there is nothing more wonderful in their determinate general forms than in those of other animals.

It may here be remarked that there is in our doctrine that harmony in all the associated phenomena which generally marks great truths. First, it agrees, as we have seen, with the idea of planet-creation by natural law. Secondly, upon this supposition, all that geology tells us of the succession of species appears natural and intelligible. Organic life _presses in_, as has been remarked, wherever there was room and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited the circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish. Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has been surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the idea of a creation by law. The more solitary commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for an immediately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one operating by laws.

It is also to be observed, that the thing to be accounted for is not merely the origination of organic being upon this little planet, third of a series which is but one of hundreds of thousands of series, the whole of which again form but one portion of an apparently infinite globe-peopled space, where all seems analogous. We have to suppose, that every one of these numberless globes is either a theatre of organic being, or in the way of becoming so. This is a conclusion which every addition to our knowledge makes only the more irresistible. Is it conceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative intelligence, that it should be constantly moving from one sphere to another, to form and plant the various species which may be required in each situation at particular times? Is such an idea accordant with our general conception of the dignity, not to speak of the power, of the Great Author? Yet such is the notion which we must form, if we adhere to the doctrine of special exercise. Let us see, on the other hand, how the doctrine of a creation by law agrees with this expanded view of the organic world.

Unprepared as most men may be for such an announcement, there can be no doubt that we are able, in this limited sphere, to form some satisfactory conclusions as to the plants and animals of those other spheres which move at such immense distances from us. Suppose that the first persons of an early nation who made a ship and ventured to sea in it, observed, as they sailed along, a set of objects which they had never before seen—namely, a fleet of other ships—would they not have been justified in supposing that those ships were occupied, like their own, by human beings possessing hands to row and steer, eyes to watch the signs of the weather, intelligence to guide them from one place to another—in short, beings in all respects like themselves, or only shewing such differences as they knew to be producible by difference of climate and habits of life. Precisely in this manner we can speculate on the inhabitants of remote spheres. We see that matter has originally been diffused in one mass, of which the spheres are portions. Consequently, inorganic matter must be presumed to be everywhere the same, although probably with differences in the proportions of ingredients in different globes, and also some difference of conditions. Out of a certain number of the elements of inorganic matter are composed organic bodies, both vegetable and animal; such must be the rule in Jupiter and in Sirius, as it is here. We, therefore, are all but certain that herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents of the organic beings of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life. Gravitation we see to be an all-pervading principle: therefore there must be a relation between the spheres and their respective organic occupants, by virtue of which they are fixed, as far as necessary, on the surface. Such a relation, of course, involves details as to the density and elasticity of structure, as well as size, of the organic tenants, in proportion to the gravity of the respective planets—peculiarities, however, which may quite well consist with the idea of a universality of general types, to which we are about to come. Electricity we also see to be universal; if, therefore, it be a principle concerned in life and in mental action, as science strongly suggests, life and mental action must everywhere be of one general character. We come to comparatively a matter of detail, when we advert to heat and light; yet it is important to consider that these are universal agents, and that, as they bear marked relations to organic life and structure on earth, they may be presumed to do so in other spheres also. The considerations as to light are particularly interesting, for, on our globe, the structure of one important organ, almost universally distributed in the animal kingdom, is in direct and precise relation to it. Where there is light there will be eyes, and these, in other spheres, will be the same in all respects as the eyes of tellurian animals, with only such differences as may be necessary to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation. It is but a small stretch of the argument to suppose that, one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal kingdom being thus universal, a parity in all the other organs—species for species, class for class, kingdom for kingdom—is highly likely, and that thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of space bear not only a general, but a particular resemblance to those of our own.

Assuming that organic beings are thus spread over all space, the idea of their having all come into existence by the operation of laws everywhere applicable, is only conformable to that principle, acknowledged to be so generally visible in the affairs of Providence, to have all done by the employment of the smallest possible amount of means. Thus, as one set of laws produced all orbs and their motions and geognostic arrangements, so one set of laws overspread them all with life. The whole productive or creative arrangements are therefore in perfect unity.

PARTICULAR CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES.

THE general likelihood of an organic creation by law having been shewn, we are next to inquire if science has any facts tending to bring the assumption more nearly home to nature. Such facts there certainly are; but it cannot be surprising that they are comparatively few and scattered, when we consider that the inquiry is into one of nature’s profoundest mysteries, and one which has hitherto engaged no direct attention in almost any quarter.

Crystallization is confessedly a phenomenon of inorganic matter; yet the simplest rustic observer is struck by the resemblance which the examples of it left upon a window by frost bear to vegetable forms. In some crystallizations the mimicry is beautiful and complete; for example, in the well-known one called the _Arbor Dianæ_. An amalgam of four parts of silver and two of mercury being dissolved in nitric acid, and water equal to thirty weights of the metals being added, a small piece of soft amalgam of silver suspended in the solution, quickly gathers to itself the particles of the silver of the amalgam, which form upon it a _crystallization precisely resembling a shrub_. The experiment may be varied in a way which serves better to detect the influence of electricity in such operations, as noted below. {166} Vegetable figures are also presented in some of the most ordinary appearances of the electric fluid. In the marks caused by positive electricity, or which it leaves in its passage, we see the ramifications of a tree, as well as of its individual leaves; those of the negative, recal the bulbous or the spreading root, according as they are clumped or divergent. These phenomena seem to say that the electric energies have had something to do in determining the forms of plants. That they are intimately connected with vegetable life is indubitable, for germination will not proceed in water charged with negative electricity, while water charged positively greatly favours it; and a garden sensibly increases in luxuriance, when a number of conducting rods are made to terminate in branches over its beds. With regard to the resemblance of the ramifications of the branches and leaves of plants to the traces of the positive electricity, and that of the roots to the negative, it is a circumstance calling for especial remark, that the atmosphere, particularly its lower strata, is generally charged positively, while the earth is always charged negatively. The correspondence here is curious. A plant thus appears as a thing formed on the basis of a natural electrical operation—the _brush_ realized. We can thus suppose the various forms of plants as, immediately, the result of a law in electricity variously affecting them according to their organic character, or respective germinal constituents. In the poplar, the brush is unusually vertical, and little divergent; the reverse in the beech: in the palm, a pencil has proceeded straight up for a certain distance, radiates there, and turns outwards and downwards; and so on. We can here see at least traces of secondary means by which the Almighty Deviser might establish all the vegetable forms with which the earth is overspread.

Vegetable and animal bodies are mainly composed of the same four simple substances or elements—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. The first combinations of these in animals are into what are called proximate principles, as albumen, fibrin, urea, alantoin, &c., out of which the structure of the animal body is composed. Now the chemist, by the association of two parts oxygen, four hydrogen, two carbon, and two nitrogen, can _make urea_. Alantoin has also been produced artificially. Two of the proximate principles being realizable by human care, the possibility of realizing or forming all is established. Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his power to realize the first step in organization. {169a} Indeed, it is fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the combinations forming the proximate principles there is no chemical peculiarity. “It is now certain,” he says, “that the same simple laws of composition pervade the whole creation; and that, if the organic chemist only takes the requisite precautions to avoid resolving into their ultimate elements the proximate principles upon which he operates, the results of his analysis will shew that they are combined precisely according to the same plan as the elements of mineral bodies are known to be.” {169b} A particular fact is here worthy of attention. “The conversion of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes of vegetable economy, is effected by the production of a secretion termed _diastose_, which occasions both the rupture of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained gum into sugar. This diastose may be separately obtained by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory as in the vegetable organization. He can also imitate its effects by other chemical agents.” {170} The writer quoted below adds, “No reasonable ground has yet been adduced for supposing that, if we had the power of bringing together the elements of any organic compound, in their requisite states and proportions, the result would be any other than that which is found in the living body.”

It is much to know the elements out of which organic bodies are composed. It is something more to know their first combinations, and that these are simply chemical. How these combinations are associated in the structure of living bodies is the next inquiry, but it is one to which as yet no satisfactory answer can be given. The investigation of the minutiæ of organic structure by the microscope is of such recent origin, that its results cannot be expected to be very clear. Some facts, however, are worthy of attention with regard to the present inquiry. It is ascertained that the basis of all vegetable and animal substances consists of nucleated cells; that is, cells having granules within them. Nutriment is converted into these before being assimilated by the system. The tissues are formed from them. The ovum destined to become a new creature, is originally only a cell with a contained granule. We see it acting this reproductive part in the simplest manner in the cryptogamic plants. “The parent cell, arrived at maturity by the exercise of its organic functions, bursts, and liberates its contained granules. These, at once thrown upon their own resources, and entirely dependent for their nutrition on the surrounding elements, develop themselves into new cells, which repeat the life of their original. Amongst the higher tribes of the cryptogamia, the reproductive cell does not burst, but the first cells of the new structure are developed within it, and these gradually extend, by a similar process of multiplication, into that primary leaf-like expansion which is the first formed structure in all plants.” {171} _Here the little cell becomes directly a plant_, _the full formed living being_. It is also worthy of remark that, in the sponges, (an animal form,) a gemmule detached from the body of the parent, and trusting for sustentation only to the fluid into which it has been cast, becomes, without further process, the new creature. Further, it has been recently discovered by means of the microscope, that there is, as far as can be judged, a perfect resemblance between the ovum of the mammal tribes, during that early stage when it is passing through the oviduct, and the young of the infusory animalcules. One of the most remarkable of these, the _volvox globator_, has exactly the form of the germ which, after passing through a long fœtal progress, becomes a complete mammifer, an animal of the highest class. It has even been found that both are alike provided with those _cilia_, which, producing a revolving motion, or its appearance, is partly the cause of the name given to this animalcule. These resemblances are the more entitled to notice, that they were made by various observers, distant from each other at the time. {172} It has likewise been noted that the globules of the blood are reproduced by the expansion of contained granules; they are, in short, _distinct organisms multiplied by the same fissiparous generation_. So that all animated nature may be said to be based on this mode of origin; _the fundamental form of organic being is a globule_, _having a new globule forming within itself_, by which it is in time discharged, and which is again followed by another and another, in endless succession. It is of course obvious that, if these globules could be produced by any process from inorganic elements, we should be entitled to say that the fact of a transit from the inorganic into the organic had been witnessed in that instance; the possibility of the commencement of animated creation by the ordinary laws of nature might be considered as established. Now it was given out some years ago by a French physiologist, that _globules could be produced in albumen by electricity_. If, therefore, these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be reproductive, it might be said that the production of albumen by artificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This has not yet been effected; but it is known to be only a chemical process, the mode of which may be any day discovered in the laboratory, and two compounds perfectly co-ordinate, urea and alantoin, have actually been produced.

In such an investigation as the present, it is not unworthy of notice that the production of shell is a natural operation which can be precisely imitated artificially. Such an incrustation takes place on both the outside and inside of the wheel in a bleaching establishment, in which cotton cloth is rinsed free of the lime employed in its purification. From the _dressing_ employed by the weaver, the cloth obtains the animal matter, _gelatin_; this and the lime form the constituents of the incrustation, exactly as in natural shell. In the wheel employed at Catrine, in Ayrshire, where the phenomenon was first observed by the eye of science, it had required ten years to produce a coating the tenth of an inch in thickness. This incrustation has all the characters of shell, displaying a highly polished surface, beautifully iridescent, and, when broken, a foliated texture. The examination of it has even thrown some light on the character and mode of formation of natural shell. “The plates into which the substance is divisible have been formed in succession, and certain intervals of time have elapsed between their formation; in general, every two contiguous laminæ are separated by a thin iridescent film, varying from the three to the fifty millionth part of an inch in thickness, and producing all the various colours of thin plates which correspond to intermediate thicknesses: between some of the laminæ no such film exists, probably in consequence of the interval of time between their formation being too short; and between others the film has been formed of unequal thickness. There can be no doubt that these iridescent films are formed when the dash-wheel is at rest during the night, and that when no film exists between two laminæ, an interval too short for its formation, (arising, perhaps, from the stopping of the work during the day,) has elapsed during the drying or induration of one lamina and the deposition of another.” {175} From this it has been deduced, by a patient investigation, that those colours of mother-of-pearl, which are incommunicable to wax, arise from iridescent films deposited between the laminæ of its structure, and it is hence inferred that _the animal_, like the wheel, _rests periodically from its labours in forming the natural substance_.

These, it will be owned, are curious and not irrelevant facts; but it will be asked what actual experience says respecting the origination of life. Are there, it will be said, any authentic instances of either plants or animals, of however humble and simple a kind, having come into existence otherwise than in the ordinary way of generation, since the time of which geology forms the record? It may be answered, that the negative of this question could not be by any means formidable to the doctrine of law-creation, seeing that the conditions necessary for the operation of the supposed life-creating laws may not have existed within record to any great extent. On the other hand, as we see the physical laws of early times still acting with more or less force, it might not be unreasonable to expect that we should still see some remnants, or partial and occasional workings of the life-creating energy amidst a system of things generally stable and at rest. Are there, then, any such remnants to be traced in our own day, or during man’s existence upon earth? If there be, it clearly would form a strong evidence in favour of the doctrine, as what now takes place upon a confined scale and in a comparatively casual manner may have formerly taken place on a great scale, and as the proper and eternity-destined means of supplying a vacant globe with suitable tenants. It will at the same time be observed that, the earth being now supplied with both kinds of tenants in great abundance, we only could expect to find the life-originating power at work in some very special and extraordinary circumstances, and probably only in the inferior and obscurer departments of the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

Perhaps, if the question were asked of ten men of approved reputation in science, nine out of the number would answer in the negative. This is because, in a great number of instances where the superficial observers of former times assumed a non-generative origin for life, (as in the celebrated case in Virgil’s fourth Georgic,) either the direct contrary has been ascertained, or exhaustive experiments have left no alternative from the conclusion that ordinary generation did take place, albeit in a manner which escapes observation. Finding that an erroneous assumption has been formed in many cases, modern inquirers have not hesitated to assume that there can be no case in which generation is not concerned; an assumption not only unwarranted by, but directly opposed to, the principles of philosophical investigation. Yet this is truly the point at which the question now rests in the scientific world.

I have no wish here to enter largely into a subject so wide and so full of difficulties; but I may remark, that the explanations usually suggested where life takes its rise without apparent generative means, always appear to me to partake much of the fallacy of the _petitio principii_. When, for instance, lime is laid down upon a piece of waste moss ground, and a crop of white clover for which no seeds were sown is the consequence, the explanation that the seeds have been dormant there for an unknown time, and were stimulated into germination when the lime produced the appropriate circumstances, appears extremely unsatisfactory, especially when we know that (as in an authentic case under my notice) the spot is many miles from where clover is cultivated, and that there is nothing for six feet below but pure peat moss, clover seeds being, moreover, known to be too heavy to be transported, as many other seeds are, by the winds. Mushrooms, we know, can be propagated by their seed; but another mode of raising them, well known to the gardener, is to mix cow and horse dung together, and thus form a bed in which they are expected to grow without any seed being planted. It is assumed that the seeds are carried by the atmosphere, unperceived by us, and, finding here an appropriate field for germination, germinate accordingly; but this is only assumption, and though designed to be on the side of a severe philosophy, in reality makes a pretty large demand on credulity. There are several persons eminent in science who profess at least to find great difficulties in accepting the doctrine of invariable generation. One of these, in the work noted below, {179a} has stated several considerations arising from analogical reasoning, which appear to him to throw the balance of evidence in favour of the aboriginal production of infusoria, {179b} the vegetation called mould, and the like. One seems to be of great force; namely, that the animalcules, which are supposed (altogether hypothetically) to be produced by ova, are afterwards found increasing their numbers, not by that mode at all, but by division of their bodies. If it be the nature of these creatures to propagate in this splitting or fissiparous manner, how could they be communicated to a vegetable infusion? Another fact of very high importance is presented in the following terms:—“The nature of the animalcule, or vegetable production, bears a constant relation to the state of the infusion, so that, in similar circumstances, the same are always produced without this being influenced by the atmosphere. There seems to be a certain _progressive advance in the productive powers of the infusion_, for at the first the animalcules are only of the smaller kinds, or monades, and afterwards _they become gradually larger and more complicated in their structure_; _after a time_, _the production ceases_, _although the materials are by no means exhausted_. When the quantity of water is very small, and the organic matter abundant, the production is usually of a vegetable nature; when there is much water, animalcules are more frequently produced.” It has been shewn by the opponents of this theory, that when a vegetable infusion is debarred from the contact of the atmosphere, by being closely sealed up or covered with a layer of oil, no animalcules are produced; but it has been said, on the other hand, that the exclusion of the air may prevent some simple condition necessary for the aboriginal development of life—and nothing is more likely. Perhaps the prevailing doctrine is in nothing placed in greater difficulties than it is with regard to the entozoa, or creatures which live within the bodies of others. These creatures do, and apparently can, live nowhere else than in the interior of other living bodies, where they generally take up their abode in the viscera, but also sometimes in the chambers of the eye, the interior of the brain, the serous sacs, and other places having no communication from without. Some are viviparous, others oviparous. Of the latter it cannot reasonably be supposed that the ova ever pass through the medium of the air, or through the blood-vessels, for they are too heavy for the one transit, and too large for the other. Of the former, it cannot be conceived how they pass into young animals—certainly not by communication from the parent, for it has often been found that entozoa do not appear in certain generations, and some of peculiar and noted character have only appeared at rare intervals, and in very extraordinary circumstances. A candid view of the less popular doctrine, as to the origin of this humble form of life, is taken by a distinguished living naturalist. “To explain the beginning of these worms within the human body, on the common doctrine that all created beings proceed from their likes, or a primordial egg, is so difficult, that the moderns have been driven to speculate, as our fathers did, on their spontaneous birth; but they have received the hypothesis with some modification. Thus it is not from putrefaction or fermentation that the entozoa are born, for both of these processes are rather fatal to their existence, but from the aggregation and fit apposition of matter which is already organized, or has been thrown from organized surfaces. Their origin in this manner is not more wonderful or more inexplicable than that of many of the inferior animals from sections of themselves. * * Particles of matter fitted by digestion, and their transmission through a living body, for immediate assimilation with it, or flakes of lymph detached from surfaces already organized, seem neither to exceed nor fall below that simplicity of structure which favours this wonderful development; and the supposition that, like morsels of a planaria, they may also, when retained in contact with living parts, and in other favourable circumstances, continue to live and be gradually changed into creatures of analogous conformation, is surely not so absurd as to be brought into comparison with the Metamorphoses of Ovid. * * We think the hypothesis is also supported in some degree by the fact, that the origin of the entozoa is favoured by all causes which tend to disturb the equality between the secerning and absorbent systems.” {182} Here particles of organized matter are suggested as the germinal origin of distinct and fully organized animals, many of which have a highly developed reproductive system. How near such particles must be to the inorganic form of matter may be judged from what has been said within the last few pages. If, then, this view of the production of entozoa be received, it must be held as in no small degree favourable to the general doctrine of an organic creation by law.