This wonderful play of the vital forces of nature is no less dependant on "conditions"--on the necessary pre-existing plasma, chemically balanced soils, organic solutions, etc.--than the alleged "dynamical aggregates," "molecules organiques," "plastide particles," or "highly differentiated life-stuff," insisted upon by the physicists, in their materialistic theories of life. These physicists make even the slightest change in developmental phases--whether statical, as in the case of crystals, or dynamical, as in the case of living organisms--to depend on physical conditions,--those aiding and abetting what they call the "molecular play of physical forces." But with their theory that matter and motion are the only self-subsistent, indestructible elements in the universe, what "molecular play" can be attributed to matter but that which is derived from motion, or some one of its alleged correlates? We can only imagine two sorts of motion as possible metaphysical conceptions in connection with matter--molar motion, or that relating to matter moving in mass, and molecular motion, or that relating to the movements of matter in its unaggregated form, or as confined to molecules.
But motion itself is not an absolute entity. It is not so much even as a collocating or placing force of matter itself. It is, at best, only a mechanical impulse imparted by one moving body to another; or, more accurately speaking, a continuous change of place in a moving body. In other words, it is simply a process or mode of action, and stands in about the same relation to matter as growth does to a living plant or tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it "force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely physical hypothesis of life.
But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely local fern (Schizoea pusilla) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey, affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it will be found that, everywhere, under the same favoring conditions, plants of the same genera and species make their appearance independently of any known processes of dissemination in the case of seeds. The distribution is not one of seeds, but rather of geographical conditions--thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and possibly chemical. And this is true of all vegetation, whether growing in the same plant zones, in high latitudes, at high altitudes, or under one degree of temperature and moisture or another. Whenever the telluric conditions are the same or similar, in the respective localities named, and the temperature and moisture correspond, the necessary plant distribution follows in obedience to the divine mandate--"Let the earth bring forth." This is the one uniform law that governs everywhere, and the only one that accounts for all the diversified manifestations of plant-life, now, as heretofore, taking place upon our globe. And the same is measurably true of animal life. It accounts for the appearance of every form of life in organic infusions; for Bacteria in the blood, Torulæ in the tissues, plastide particles, morphological cells, and every other vital manifestation, from the smallest conceivable "unit" of life in protaplasmic matter, to the lordliest and most defiant forest oak that ever bared its arms to the storms and tempests of centuries. A purely materialistic science may perk its head with an air of affected incredulity, and superciliously turn aside from this hypothesis, because it does not shock our veneration for the Sacred Scriptures, but let its special advocates advance some more consistent and rational life-theory than that of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force," or content themselves, with Dr. Gull, in confessing that they are unable to draw the first line between "living matter" and "dead matter," as they absurdly use these terms.
It is conceded that much extravagant speculation has been wasted upon this question of the distribution of seeds. The ambition of each new writer has seemingly been to hit upon some new theory of distribution. The "bird theory" is a failure, as we have shown; nor do they invariably fly due east or west, so as to supply the several climatic zones with their respective vegetations. The same is true of the "squirrel theory," for this nimble little rodent is as likely to head north or south as to follow the course of the sun; the "wind theory" is subject to too many shifts and changes to be accounted a reliable agency; the "river-and-ocean-current theories" are still less satisfactory, since rivers flow in diverse directions, and ocean currents bear with safety only their own aquatic plants; the "mummy-case theory" is hardly an accredited agency, and the "war theory" is attended with too much destruction of life to be safely relied on as conserving the vital forces of nature. The climatic zones, and high and low altitudes, have still to be consulted to get at the real causes of distribution, or such as conclusively satisfy the scientific mind. For no single plant is really a cosmopolite. They are simply the habitats of their own separate zones, except as high altitudes are reached, and climatic and other conditions favor the appearance of such vegetation as belongs to other plant zones. If we would find the more common plants and weeds of New England in North Carolina or Tennessee, we must go into the mountainous regions of those states, at an altitude which compensates for the difference in latitude, and where the influencing conditions of plant-life are essentially the same. In such localities, we shall find the same household plants, garden weeds, and general vegetation, as in higher northern latitudes, not because their seeds have been borne thither from New England or elsewhere, but because the same climatic, telluric and other conditions prevail as in the more northern localities. And these conditions are what determine the development and growth of local vegetations.
And so of the alpine firs, grasses, harebells, lichens, mosses, etc. Their seeds have not been scattered, by any known agencies, over intervening regions, for thousands of miles or more, in order to find lodgment on these lofty mountain cones; but, conditions being the same, the same vegetable growths appear. This is nature's method of propagating "vital units" and diversifying plant-life--geographical conditions everywhere determining the proper distribution. But if nature is so prolific of vital resources, in the propagation of plant-life, what need has she of natural seeds? We anticipate this inquiry only to answer it; for we recognize it as a legitimate one in this connection. Our answer is that the seeds are given for the use of man, that he may control and utilize vegetation, and not have to depend on more or less uncertain conditions. Agricultural chemistry must be carried to a much higher degree of perfection than it is likely to reach in the next ten centuries at least, to determine whether any particular plat of ground has been chemically balanced for the growth of wheat, to the exclusion of other cereal crops. Besides, the process of soil-balancing might be altogether too expensive to be indulged in by judicious husbandry. These chemical conditions admit of too many possible failures, in balancing even the smallest patch of ground, to justify experiments in the direction named. Seeds also subserve the important subsidiary purpose of supplying food for many birds and animals, more or less useful to man.
But chemistry has its limits as to usefulness in all human laboratories. As man's wisdom is limited, so is his power over the elementary forces of nature confined to very narrow boundaries. It is given to him to search out many inventions, and to pry, thus far and no farther, into the secrets of nature, or, more properly speaking, into the secrets of God. There is no doubt that if our chemico-molecular theorists respecting life-phenomena, could produce, in their laboratories, the exact inter-uterine plasma, or plasmic conditions, of an animal--any animal, in fact--and continue these conditions during the proper period of gestation, they might produce life de novo.[[13]] But the most daring physicist would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to "molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking.
It is hardly necessary to assume that the same law of vital force governs in the appearance and geographical distribution of fungi, as universally obtains in the higher and more complex vegetal growths. And although it may be difficult, in some instances, to draw the precise line between certain low mycological forms and the amoeboid and some other primitive manifestations of animal life, yet all vegetable physiologists agree in assigning a purely vegetable origin to all the primary groups of fungi--their general cellular character determining their proper place in classification. And in all their extended family groups, pervading nature as widely as animal and vegetable life, we find that uniform chemical and other conditions produce uniform mycological results. Spores are no more necessary for their appearance, in the first instance, than acorns are essential to the appearance of an oak forest when it succeeds the pine. Wherever the necessary conditions of moisture and heat are found to obtain, in connection with decayed or decaying substances, the particular form of fungus indicated thereby, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, will make its appearance. Continuously damp walls, or wall-paper, will produce them in specific variety, not because their invisible spores are flying about in the atmosphere to find appropriate lodgment, but because the necessary conditions obtain for their manifestation, or for the development of their vital units--those everywhere diffused, and ready to burgeon forth from the proper matrix, or from certain nutrient conditions to be met with in all vegetable substances, after the process of decay has commenced. Some orders appear only in a single matrix, but the greater part of them flourish on different decaying substances.
Dr. M.C. Cooke, in speaking of non-parasitic fungi, and especially of moulds, says: "It would be far more difficult to mention substances on which they are never developed than to indicate where they have been found." The parasitic fungi, however, generally confine themselves to certain special plants, and rarely to any other. It is only the condition of these special plants, when affected by decay, that seems favorable for their development; not because their spores (assuming that all fungi come from spores,) possess the intelligence to fly about and hunt up the proper nutrient matter on which to subsist during their developmental progress from specific spores into genetic forms of life. The rust or blight of grain is not the cause, therefore, but rather the result, of the common disease known as "blight." Without some excess or deficiency of absorption and elaboration in the growth of grain or plants--something essentially disturbing their normal and harmonious processes of development--no mycological forms would appear on their stems or roots, nor would they develop themselves on their fading leaves or congested and decaying fruit. To say that there is any intelligent preference in these fungi--the different species of Mucor, for instance--for disgusting offal over decaying fruit, bread, paste, preserves, etc., is to predicate a higher degree of intelligence of fungus spores than of the average brute creation, with all its wonderful instincts for guidance.
We might refer to other classes of fungi developing themselves in the testa of hard seeds, and in the interior of acorns, sweet chestnuts, etc.,--those in which there is no discoverable external opening by the aid of the microscope--to show the absolute absurdity of the theory that the spores of fungi, including the non-parasitic and other autonomous moulds, go madly foraging about the country in pursuit of decaying cocoanuts, apples, pears, plums, oranges, etc., and even committing their depredations on hermetically canned fruits, the concealed honeycomb of beehives, the pupa of moths, and whatever else they may intelligently select as a desirable matrix or habitat. No such theory as this will stand the test of thorough research and investigation, in any mycological direction. Fungi everywhere make their initial appearance in the conditions of decay, as plants and trees originally make theirs in the environing conditions of vital manifestation. That our life-giving atmosphere--the "pater omnipotens Æther" of Virgil, "descending into the bosom of his joyous spouse (the earth) in fructifying showers, and great himself, mingling with her great body" for the development of all things of life--should be so immeasurably thronged with death-pursuing fungi that myriads of their spores might dance without jostling on the point of a cambric needle, is infinitely more fanciful than the conceptions of the poet, in personifying the atmosphere as "father Æther," and the earth as his "joyous spouse." But life, with its "pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift," has reached its highest conceptions in the mind of the poet, not in the speculations of the scientist. What a "mingled yarn," spun from many-colored yet invisible threads, is it in the creative mind of a Shakespeare, and how it looms up into "a dome of many-colored glass, staining the white radiance of eternity," under the magic touch of a Shelley! And yet how is it dwarfed down to a contemptible piece of "molecular machinery" by the scientist--one so utterly contemptible in its manifestations that it is ordered to take "a back seat" in this universe of all-potential matter and motion!
Dr. Cooke, in his "Handbook of British Fungi," virtually concedes that the spores of the large puff-ball (Lycoperdon giganteum), as well as those of mushrooms, truffles, and other edible fungi (those with whose methods of propagation man is best acquainted), may be produced artificially. But the process by which their production is thus effected, is more properly a natural than an artificial one. In speaking of truffle-grounds, he says (quoting from Broome) "that whenever a plantation of beech, or beech and fir, is made in the chalky districts of Salisbury Plain, after the lapse of a few years truffles are produced, and that the plantations continue productive for a period of from ten to fifteen years, after which they cease to be so." No truffle spores were planted in these cases, but the conditions of the soil, interlaced by the roots and shaded by the branches of the young beech trees, or the beech and fir, became favorable for the development of truffle "germs," and they made their appearance just as mushrooms do in caves and other places, where artificial beds are made and chemically balanced for their development and growth. And the reason why they disappeared, after a period of ten or fifteen years, was simply because the proper nutriment of the soil was exhausted, and not in consequence of its being too deeply shaded by the growing trees. One uniform rule would seem to govern in the culture of this much-coveted fungus. Wherever the necessary environing conditions obtain, they appear, and wherever these conditions fail, they disappear, notwithstanding the most persistent efforts to save them by watering the soil with fresh infusions of the plant. In proof of this, one form of truffle (Tuber æstivum) appears under beech trees, another form (Tuber macrosporum) under oak trees, and still a third form (Tuber brumale) under oaks and white poplars; showing that so slight a change in soil conditions as that resulting from the presence of poplars among oaks, produces a very material change in the character of the fungus--one amounting to a specific difference in variety.