Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

All these circumstantially narrated facts (?) were gathered (by somebody) about forty years ago. In what authentic and satisfactorily verified record are they to be found to-day? The writer gives us no clue. The stomach, the coffin, the Roman coins, some of the wonderfully preserved seeds, as well as the obolus in the mouth of the dead soldier, should be found somewhere. They could not have disappeared in a night. If they had withstood the relentless tooth of time for seventeen hundred years, in the surface soil of Dorchester, the last forty years ought not to have obliterated all trace of them. The story is simply too incredible for belief, if printed in forty "Great Architects of Nature."

From 1847 to 1851, the writer went into any number of Wisconsin mounds--those not essentially dissimilar from the Roman barrows in England--in company with the late I. A. Lapham, of Milwaukee; and the idea of finding any human stomach, with or without seeds in it--with probably not half the time intervening between burial and exhumation, as in the case of this Roman soldier--would have been instantly rejected by the distinguished archaeologist accompanying us. Indeed, had any such discovery been made, he would have unhesitatingly pronounced the mound tampered with for the purposes of imposition. It is possible that surface soil, containing some raspberry seeds, may have been taken to the "Horticultural Society's garden" to which Dr. Child refers, and planted there as stated; but that they were from a human stomach that had lain buried for seventeen hundred years in the surface soil of England, or any other country, is simply preposterous. It caps the climax of all the wonderful "seed-stories" yet manufactured for the scientific mind to wrestle with. It is easy enough to find soil about old stumps, and fallen trunks and branches of trees, which will produce raspberries, either with or without the presence of seed. And soil might have been taken from the bottom of this Dorchester barrow which produced them. But the appearance of the bushes must have depended on the conditions of the soil, not on seeds eaten by a Roman soldier nearly two thousand years ago. That version of the story must be summarily dismissed the attention of scientific men.

Professor Marsh, in the work to which we have already several times alluded, says: "When newly cleared ground is burnt over in the United States, the ashes are hardly cold before they are covered with a crop of fire-weed, a tall herbaceous plant, very seldom growing under other circumstances, and often not to be found for a distance of many miles from the clearing." The botanical name of this plant is Erechthites hieracifolia, and it is well known to the botanists of New England. Its seeds are almost as destructible by fire as thistle-down itself; and it is not to be supposed that any of the seeds borne by the winds or by birds, and scattered through the clearing before it was burned, could have survived the intense heat to which they must have been subjected in the burning off of a heavy and dense growth of felled timber. The seeds, if any, must have been scattered after the fire, and not before it. But these heavy clearings--those in which we have witnessed the most abundant crops of fire-weed--are generally burnt off in the early spring, when there are no seeds to be scattered, as all those of the previous year's growth find their proper lodgment in the soil before the winter fully closes in. The seeds for which Professor Marsh would have to search, therefore, would be those grown in some corresponding latitude, or plant zone, in the southern hemisphere, not within thousands of miles from the clearing in which they so promptly make their appearance.

Professor Marsh suggests, however, that they may have come from "the deeply buried seeds of a former vegetation, quickened into life by the heat." But had he examined these plants, in their incipient stages of growth, he would have found that they sprung directly from the surface of the burnt soil, their initial rootlets hardly extending to the depth of two-thirds of an inch below it, and where they must have utterly perished from the heat. The theory he suggests is the only possible one, he thinks, to account for the mystery, and hence its suggestion by him. But he has only to pass one of the delicate seeds of this plant through the flame of a candle to see that it instantly perishes by fire. His suggested theory must be abandoned, therefore, and that of the Bible genesis accepted in its place.

The fact is, and it ought to be well known to the closer student of nature, that the fire-weed makes its appearance in the "conditions" of the burnt soil, just as stramonium does in the conditions of the soil where a coal-pit has been recently burned; that is, not from seed, but from "vital units," or germs, everywhere present in the earth--those taking advantage of environing conditions, just as Bacteria or Torultz spring from the proper organic infusions. And the young shoots of stramonium, in a recently burned coal-pit, will be found to spring directly from the surface of the burnt ground, where all seeds and living organism must have perished in the heat, and not at any considerable depth below it. Their first appearance is on the immediate surface of the burnt ground, the same as in the case of fire-weed, and at a time when there were no seeds to be distributed, except such as must have come from the southern hemisphere, or been casually picked up by birds, and taken their slim chances of survival after passing through the natural "gristmills" of the birds. And even this supposition, would only account for the appearance of a single stramonium plant or two, not for a thick bed of it covering the entire ground. The theory of seed-distribution, in this and other cases, is wholly out of the question; as much so as when white clover makes its appearance on a closely-grazed prairie, hundreds of miles away from where there has been a single sprig of clover growing in a thousand years. Every closely observant person, living for any length of time on our western prairies, is familiar with the fact that when the rank and hardier grasses, usually growing thereon, are effectually fed down by stock, and especially by sheep, the prairie grasses disappear, and the ground at once comes in with white clover, and the other nutritious gramma or grasses of our common pasture lands. No seed has been sown in these localities, and none could have been found had every square inch of the surface soil been examined by the most powerful microscope. The white clover and these nutritious grasses make their appearance on these prairies, just as the first sprig of vegetation did on the earth, not from seed, but from preëxisting vital units or primordial germs, implanted therein from the beginning, and awaiting the necessary conditions for their development and growth.

The "bird theory" is the one almost universally relied upon for the explanation of these phenomena, where the seeds distributed, or supposed to be distributed, are not winged. But we are satisfied that birds perform no such important office, in the matter of seed-distribution, as is generally attributed to them. We have examined, during the past two seasons, a large number of bird-droppings, and find our previous impressions respecting them fully verified. With all the more delicate seeds--those of our common field grasses and weeds--the chances are a thousand to one that none of them will ever pass the cloaca of the bird eating them, in any condition to germinate. All seed-eating birds are also gravel-eaters; and the pebbles and gravel they eat are mostly silex, or the material from which our best buhrstones are made. These pass into the gizzard, or pyloric division of the bird's stomach, where they are utilized, the same as we utilize our buhrstones. The gizzard has sharply corrugated interior walls, extremely thick and muscular, which involuntarily contract and expand, giving the bird a tremendous grinding power over his food, considering the size of his grinding apparatus. The seeds--all the seeds, in fact, he eats--pass at once into his crop, or the natural "hopper" to his "gristmill," where they undergo a moistening or macerating process previous to being ground into the finest pulp in the gizzard. As a general rule, all the seeds a bird eats are ground into this pulpy state before they pass into the intestinal canal, extending from the gizzard to the cloaca. The hard, semi-translucent, and highly elastic outer coating of most small seeds, may be measurably preserved in its passage through the gizzard, and, resuming its oval shape in the thinner pulpy mass contained in the upper portion of the intestine, present the appearance of seed in the cloacal discharges, and thus deceive the casual observer. But the use of a spatula and a small piece of polished stone slab will show that the entire discharge is excrementitious matter, with the single exception of this silicious coating of the seeds.

The case is different, however, with the fruit-eating birds. The fruits they consume are retained but a comparatively short time in the crop, pass hurriedly through the gizzard, and no doubt carry along with them some of the smaller seeds of berries, and now and then the pit of a cherry or small plum. The gizzard, in these cases, is simply gorged with the pulp and juices of the fruit, its muscular action more or less relaxed, and some of the seeds consequently escape the grinding process they would otherwise undergo. And yet we are satisfied that a majority of these seeds even, are more or less thoroughly triturated by a healthy gravel-eating bird. This would certainly be the case if they were retained for any length of time in the pyloric division of the bird's stomach. All birds have gizzards, but their grinding capacity depends very much on the character of the food they eat. Birds of prey, and others subsisting mostly or entirely on animal food, have thin, membranous, and comparatively flabby gizzards; while those living on hard grains and seeds have extremely thick, powerful, and muscular ones,--those capable of crushing up and thoroughly triturating all the food they take into their crops. These gizzards are nature's gristmills, and they grind exceedingly fine. If any seed escapes, it is because the mill has been flooded by the bird, and not because of any defect in the grinding apparatus.

These birds are not, therefore "natural sowers of seeds," as Professor Marsh and some others claim; but are, at most, only accidental or chance-sowers. Nature never designed that they should do anything more than consume the food they eat, or submit it to the proper action of their digestive organs. It might as well be claimed that the secretary bird is a "natural sower of serpents," as that many of the grain-eating birds are "the natural sowers of seeds." The theory is too foraminated--too full of loopholes and unsatisfactory conditions--to be accepted as an explanation of the more general phenomena presented. The fruit-eating quadrupeds are, relatively, far better sowers of seeds than the birds, for they eat fruit without sending their grists to mill. Dr. Dwight rejected the transportation theory as early as 1820, and Professor Marsh gives any number of cases where it was necessary for him to abandon it. And yet some of our ablest writers, publishing works of quite recent date, adhere to it as the only theory that accounts for all the phenomena presented.

Professor George Thurber, in speaking of the dissemination of seeds, finds other agencies therefor than winds, birds, quadrupeds, etc., such as we have already named. For instance, he claims that rivers, ocean currents, mountain torrents, and even wars, contribute largely towards their dispersion and dissemination throughout different parts of the earth. All this may be true to a limited extent; but none of these enumerated agencies will account for more than a very few of the many well-authenticated facts we have given, and many others that might be given, if our limits permitted. Among the instances where wars have had, or are claimed to have had, an important agency in the distribution of seeds throughout an invaded country, he mentions the fact that "after our late civil war, a little leguminous plant (Lespedeza striata) sprang up all over the southern states," and adds, "that it was not known how it came, or where from, but its native country is Japan." In some parts of the South it is known as "Japan clover," and is highly valued as a forage plant. But the war had nothing more to do with the appearance of this plant "all over the southern states," than the changes of the moon, or the phenomenal man therein. The plant had been noticed in certain localities in the South before the war, but the circumstance of its very general appearance throughout a large area of that section of country, was not particularly noticed until the confederate troops began to move from one southern state to another, when, finding it a valuable forage plant, they naturally enough regarded it as a providential dispensation, especially in those sections where other forage plants and nutritious gramma were not abundant. But this plant would have made its appearance just the same had the war never been thought of as a possible remedy for aggressive legislation, however real or imaginary it may have been.

It can be easily accounted for, however, on the theory we have suggested--that of the germinal principle of life implanted in the earth, as the Bible genesis indubitably indicates. The plant in question has long been a native of Japan, which lies in the same warm temperate zone as the southern states. The same general hygrometric and thermometric conditions prevail throughout the two countries or sections of country. These, added to the necessary telluric conditions, give the required moisture, heat, and soil-constituents for the development of the Japan clover in the South, the same as it was originally developed in its native country. And it is just as much native to the South now, as it was hundreds or thousand's of years ago to Japan. It did not come from seeds scattered by war, or any other imaginable agency of man, but from the indestructible, vital units or germs implanted in the earth itself. Had the plant appeared in any one locality, or even in half a dozen separate localities, in the South, it might possibly have been accounted for on the theory of Professor Thurber. But its simultaneous appearance over "all the southern states," as he puts it, absolutely negatives any such theory. Neither winds, river or ocean currents, casual mountain torrents, birds, quadrupeds, war, or even man himself, could have effected this sudden and wide distribution of the plant in question. It came as did all other plant-life, in the first instance, from geographical conditions--those favoring the development of primordial germs--just as the different organic infusions, experimentally prepared by the physiologist, produce their respective forms of infusorial life; each distinctive form depending on the chemical conditions of the infusion at the time the microscopic examination is made. Change the conditions, or defer the examination until the conditions themselves are changed, and other and different forms of life will make their appearance, in harmony with the physiological law we have named.