Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

The important exception to which we refer is that of Professor Agassiz, as reported by his associate professor of Harvard University, Mr. Asa Gray, in his "Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism." In this work Professor Gray says of his late distinguished associate, that so far as he was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication, the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the individuals composing it from a common stock, of a local origin."

And Professor Gray adds this further testimony to the closeness of his associate's observations, in considering the very point here under consideration: "Agassiz wholly eliminates community of descent from his idea of species, and even conceives a species to have been as numerous in individuals, and as widely spread over space, or as segregated in discontinuous spaces, from the first to the later periods." And this view is undoubtedly the correct one. At all events, it entirely harmonizes with the facts of the biblical genesis, and obviates the necessity of accounting for the appearance of the same genera and species of plants or animals in the southern as in the northern hemispheres; in fact, their appearance in all parts of the globe, in corresponding isotherms, and under similar conditions of moisture and soil-constituents.

Wherever the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions favor, the class of vegetation indicated by the presence of these conditions makes its appearance, just as the fire-weed makes its appearance in our warm temperate zone, not from the presence of seed, but simply the presence of "conditions"--the provision of man harmonizing with the prevision of nature. In the same way the "Japan clover" made its appearance, as Professor Thurber states, "all over the southern states" during the late civil war, not from the migration of plants, but the presence of natural conditions.[[16]]

The numerous facts we have already given, and many others that might be arrayed in advocacy of our position, taken in connection with the general facts here presented in regard to plant-distribution, all point directly to climatal and soil conditions as the real cause of dissemination, and not to their migration from continent to continent, and across vast intervening seas and oceans, as the theory of Professor Gray and others would require us to believe. Take the case of the Schizoea pusilla of the New Jersey pine barrens, to which we have already referred, growing in similar barrens in New Zealand, and how are we to account for their antipodal appearance upon the globe? Professor Thurber refers to this plant as a "purely local fern" of New Jersey, and says it was for a long time supposed to be peculiar to that state until it was ascertained that it grew in New Zealand. Whether this plant "travelled" from New Zealand to New Jersey, or journeyed in the opposite direction, none of these "specific-centre" gentlemen can well inform us. Professor Agassiz would have said that it might have appeared, in numerous individuals, in both localities at the same time, or at different times, as conditions favored; and this would have been an exact scientific statement, no doubt, of the fact. Mr. Arthur Renfrey, and those who accept his scientific formulæ, must insist that this most beautiful of all our ferns was such a "favorite child of nature" that she condescended to create it twice "in time and place," instead of only once. It is a poor rule, they may say, that has no exceptions in phenomenal manifestation.

Professor Gray may insist that such a phenomenon as this requires belief in the supernatural, and that migration by ocean-currents is the more rational theory of the two. But M. Alphonse de Candolle--quite as high authority as we can quote--has come to the conclusion that marine currents, and all other suggested means of distant transportation, "have played only a very small part in the actual dispersion of species," even across narrow channels and the near arms of seas. But why should the appearance of this fern at opposite points of the globe, with thousands of miles of ocean and continent intervening, be any more supernatural than the presence of Bacteria or Torulæ[[17]] in different organic infusions? If the vital units of these infusoriæ, are present in experimental infusion, as Professor Bastian virtually admits, why may not the vital germs or units of this Schizoea pusilla have made their appearance, in developmental forms, both in New Zealand and New Jersey, at the same or different periods of time? If Professor Gray regards the microscopical forms in organic infusions, or the statical forms in inorganic solutions, as supernatural, or as above the powers of nature, then we have no exceptions to make to his position. First, prove that these vital manifestations of nature are above the powers with which she has been endowed, or was originally endowed and we will concede the question of supernaturalness, and drop all exceptions to his line of argument. Whenever a dynamic law, or a statical, is found to be uniformly operative under a given set of conditions, we had supposed the operation not to be above the powers of nature, but in entire accord with them, and hence not supernatural.

But let us see into what an inextricable labyrinth of difficulty we are led by this theory of plant-migration from the equatorial to the sub-arctic zone, and vice-versa, and even beyond the equator to the sub-antarctic zone, and still vice versa. Before proceeding to consider the probable duration of the several geographical epochs, called glacial periods, on which their theory of plant-migration depends, or considering the evidence touching these glacial periods, we will state their position in regard to these possible migrations as briefly and concisely as we know how. Mr. Darwin's solution of this problem is the generally accepted one of the evolutionists, as well as most of the present scientific world. As the truth, or rather the falsity, of his pet theory of evolution depended on the satisfactory solution of this vexed problem, it became necessary for him to give his best and entire mental energies to the gigantic task which was, by universal consent, assigned him. The reader shall see how admirably the thermal equator is crossed by Mr. Darwin, with his vast swarms of flies, mosquitoes, insectivorous and other plants, forest trees, anthropoid apes, and general menagerie of wild animals, such as would gladden the heart of the "great American showman" beyond the most extravagant comparison.

The question, bear in mind, which he was specially called upon to solve, was how the temperate forms north--those, for instance, of the warm and cold temperate zones--managed to cross the thermal equator, and invade the corresponding zones in the southern hemisphere; just as though there was any more necessity of determining this question than the opposite one, of how the southern forms came to invade the northern hemisphere. We will give his solution of this problem in his own language, that we may not be charged with misrepresentation.

He says, in speaking of the glacial periods: "As the cold became more and more intense, we know that arctic forms invaded the temperate regions; and, from the facts just given, there can hardly be a doubt that some of the more vigorous, dominant, and widest-spread temperate forms invaded the equatorial lowlands. The inhabitants (flora and fauna) of these hot lowlands would at the same time have migrated to the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the south; for the southern hemisphere was at this period warmer. On the decline of the glacial period, as both hemispheres gradually recovered their former temperatures, the northern forms living on the lowlands under the equator would have been driven to their former homes or have been destroyed, being replaced by the equatorial forms returning from the south. Some, however, of the northern temperate forms would almost certainly have ascended any adjoining highland, where, if sufficiently lofty, they would have long survived, like the arctic forms on the mountains of Europe.

"In the regular course of events the southern hemisphere would, in its turn, be subject to a severe glacial period, with the northern hemisphere rendered warmer; and then the southern temperate forms would invade the equatorial lowlands. The northern forms which had before been left on the mountains would now descend and mingle with the southern forms. These latter, when the warmth returned, would return to their former homes, leaving some few species on the mountains, and carrying southward with them some of the northern temperate forms, which had descended from their mountain fastnesses. Thus we should have some few species identically the same in the northern and southern temperate zones, and on the mountains of the intermediate tropical regions."

We are sorry to spoil so ingenious a theory as this to account for plant-migration from the temperate zones north to the corresponding zones south. But in spite of all the great names which will frown down upon us in the attempt, we are obliged to demolish this altitudiness structure, even at the risk of its tumbling about our own ears.