NOTE 3.—Book i., Chap. iii.
On Insect Embryos, Invisible Animalcules, Infusorias as the Predecessors or Forerunners of the Insect, &c.—The work of the vermets has been observed, in Sicily, by M. de Quatrefages.—As for the microscopic fossils, the infusorias, &c., their great coup de théâtre has been Ehrenberg's discovery. See his Mémoires in the Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Second Series, vols, i., ii., vi., vii., viii. In volume i., p. 134, for 1834, he specifies the point at which Cuvier left the science, and how much his discovery has added to it.
Upon the living world, upon the processes at present in operation for the creation of little spheres, on those humble constructors who accomplish such great things, we owe all our information to the English voyagers, the Nelsons,[S] the Darwins, and others. They are minute and very simple observers, generally timid in their assertions, which have been of the boldest character, they having seen the very heart of the mystery, and caught Nature in the act. Read Darwin (whose researches have been most ably summed up by Sir Charles Lyell) for information on the prodigious manufacture of chalk, divided alternately between the fishes and the polypes, which are building up islands with it, and will soon construct continents.
[S] "Nous devons tout aux navigateurs Anglais, aux Nelson, aux Darwin," etc.
England alone, that immense poulpe whose arms enfold the earth, and who incessantly feels and examines it, could observe it thoroughly in its distant solitudes, where at its ease it continues its everlasting procreation. The great theories formerly advanced in explanation of the cataclysms, epochs, and revolutions of the earth, will lose, perhaps, something of their importance. For we know now that everything is in a state of constant change.
Does Europe perceive that quite a complete literature has sprung from Great Britain in the last twenty years? I describe it as an immense commission of inquiry into the condition of the globe, undertaken by the English. They alone could do it. And why? Because other nations travel, but only the English reside. They daily recommence at all points of the earth the life-study of a Robinson Crusoe: and this is done by a crowd of isolated observers, led abroad by commercial speculation, and hence so much the less systematical in their inquiries.
NOTE 4.—Book i., Chap. iv.
(Love and Death.) On the Female Apparatus.—Réaumur,—and, in fact, every writer,—has admired the manner in which the weapons of war become the instruments of maternal love. M. Lacase, in a very beautiful thesis, the result of independent observations, and a continuation of the analogous works of an eminent master, Léon Dufour, has treated this subject with great anatomical preciseness. An original and important point of his labour is, undoubtedly, his demonstration, conformably to the views of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Serres, Audouin, and others, "that the very various armours which prolong the abdomen imply the modification, or even the sacrifice, of one or two of its posterior rings." Thus Nature apparently operates upon a fixed, amount of substance, only increasing one part at the expense of others, which are shortened or transformed.