OCR Text |
Show EXPLANATIONS show that those animals have actually had ~men modified descendants as may have been attributed to them. I woul(t entreat the candid opponent of the transmutation theory to review the subject in the improved light in which it a~pear5, with thi~ most gratuitous assumption set aside. \Vith regard to the origination of new life from inorganic elements, the Broomfield expe1·iment would be quite deci~1ve, if any evidence could be admitted for what men :-tre unwilling to believe. The Edinburgh reviewer writes two pages which appear to put the alleged fact much out of countenance; and yet it is true that ridicule, vvhich always proceeds upon assumption, forms their entire composition. He states that specimens of the insect were sent to Paris, where they set a whole conclave of philosophers a-laughing, because they were found to contain ova. It did not occur to him that independent generation is what the development theory nresumes of every animal family which may have ever had an origin otherwise than ex ovo. Other specimens were sent to London, but there their fate was sealed by their being ft,und to be not a new species, but one then abundant in the country. These circumstances, with a few empty jests, sati-sfy the critic that there was no independent generation in the case. Against such a conclusion, proceeding upon mere supposition, I adduce careful experiment. During the last three years, Mr. Weekes of Sandwich, has continued to subject solutions to electric action, and in variably found insects produred in these instances, 'vhile they as invariably failed to appear where the electric aetion was not employEd, but every other condition fulfilled. The rigid care taken in these experimt>nts to exclude vitiating circumstances gives them a high claim to notice, and I therefore present, as an ap· pendix, two letters fron1 Mr. vVeekes upon the subject They cannot fail to be read with interest, and the mor~ so as they exl!ibit a man pursuing the investigation of an Important natural fact under the rnost discouraging circu~: stances. If this new presentment of the Acarus Crossn shall still excite ridicule, I can only regret the mood. of mind from which that ridicule arises; but the opposite party must excuse my attaching no importance to a·ly~ hing besides fact and argument. These alleged phenom· ena are open, like all others, to ~h.e test of co':ln.ter-ex( Jf:flillent Let them be suhjectcd to 1t 1n the most ng1d manr. er, ar,d set aside in the case. of failure But to meet them "\"ESTIGES OF CREATIVE LAW. 26!1 merely with scoffs and jests, or at the most, certain wholly gratuitous assumptions as to a possibly various c:ause, is not philosophical, and thereforr:- deserves no consi<..eration. Having thus presented \·estiges of laws for the origination and modification of organic being; I must protest against proof of the existence of such laws being held indispensable to the development theory. The earth. we ~ee, has been peopled for ages before man began to observe nature or chronicle his observations. The organic world attained what appears to us completeness, in remote ages. It is a thing done, as individual reproduction is done at the birth of the new creature. We are not, therefore, to expect conspicuous examples of either a new origin of life or a modification of species at the present day. Though, therefore, not one unequivocal instance of such origin and such mouifieation could be presented, it would say nothing positive against the hypothesis that species originated, and made a series of advances in general 0rganization, by the efficacy uf law, in times long antecedent to our historical period. vVe should still have to say that the evidence of iuch phenomena was to be looked for elsewhere-namely, in the history of the progress of organic being as chronicled for us by geology, and in the history which physiology affords us of the progress of the individual embryo. See· inO', then, that plants and animals came into existence gradually, in the course of a vast period of time, and in a succession conforming generally to their grades in organization, and the stages through which the embryo of one of the highest has to pass before it attains maturity, we might say that we had seen all that could well be expected in the case, and euough to establish a strong probability for the development theory. Nevertheless, it may be admitted that any evidence of the continued existence of the creative and modifying laws is still desirable, for the sake of corroboration. And suc.h is the light in which I regard the facts which we possess regarding variations of type, and the production of some of the lower plants and animal~ by means independent of generation. As in the progress of an individual being, even after birth, we see t~e laws which preside over reproduction operating still in a faint degree in the defective nutrition which stunts, and the favoring conditions which advance and glorify, the state of infancy and youth, so might we expect that the laws "fpich ori~inally spread the vegetablP. and animal king- |