Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

by Robert Chambers

There is another series of facts, akin to the above, and which deserve not less attention. The pig, in its domestic state, is subject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free; hence the disease called measles in pork. The domestication of the pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man; indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event. Whence, then, the first progenitor of this hydatid? So also there is a tinea which attacks dressed wool, but never touches it in its unwashed state. A particular insect disdains all food but chocolate, and the larva of the oinopota cellaris lives nowhere but in wine and beer, all of these being articles manufactured by man. There is likewise a creature called the pimelodes cyclopum, which is only found in subterranean cavities connected with certain specimens of the volcanic formation in South America, dating from a time posterior to the arrangements of the earth for our species. Whence the first pymelodes cyclopum? Will it, to a geologist, appear irrational to suppose that, just as the pterodactyle was added in the era of the new red sandstone, when the earth had become suited for such a creature, so may these creatures have been added when media suitable for their existence arose, and that such phenomena may take place any day, the only cause for their taking place seldom being the rarity of the rise of new physical conditions on a globe which seems to have already undergone the principal part of its destined mutations?

Between such isolated facts and the greater changes which attended various geological eras, it is not easy to see any difference, besides simply that of the scale on which the respective phenomena took place, as the throwing off of one copy from an engraved plate is exactly the same process as that by which a thousand are thrown off. Nothing is more easy to conceive than that to Creative Providence, the numbers of such phenomena, the time when, and the circumstances under which they take place, are indifferent matters. The Eternal One has arranged for everything beforehand, and trusted all to the operation of the laws of his appointment, himself being ever present in all things. We can even conceive that man, in his many doings upon the surface of the earth, may occasionally, without his being aware of it, or otherwise, act as an instrument in preparing the association of conditions under which the creative laws work; and perhaps some instances of his having acted as such an instrument have actually occurred in our own time.

I allude, of course, to the experiments conducted a few years ago by Mr. Crosse, which seemed to result in the production of a heretofore unknown species of insect in considerable numbers. Various causes have prevented these experiments and their results from receiving candid treatment, but they may perhaps be yet found to have opened up a new and most interesting chapter of nature’s mysteries. Mr. Crosse was pursuing some experiments in crystallization, causing a powerful voltaic battery to operate upon a saturated solution of silicate of potash, when the insects unexpectedly made their appearance. He afterwards tried nitrate of copper, which is a deadly poison, and from that fluid also did live insects emerge. Discouraged by the reception of his experiments, Mr. Crosse soon discontinued them; but they were some years after pursued by Mr. Weekes, of Sandwich, with precisely the same results. This gentleman, besides trying the first of the above substances, employed ferro-cyanet of potash, on account of its containing a larger proportion of carbon, the principal element of organic bodies; and from this substance the insects were produced in increased numbers. A few weeks sufficed for this experiment, with the powerful battery of Mr. Crosse; but the first attempts of Mr. Weekes required about eleven months, a ground of presumption in itself that the electricity was chiefly concerned in the phenomenon. The changes undergone by the fluid operated upon, were in both cases remarkable, and nearly alike. In Mr. Weekes’ apparatus, the silicate of potash became first turbid, then of a milky appearance; round the negative wire of the battery, dipped into the fluid, there gathered a quantity of gelatinous matter, a part of the process of considerable importance, considering that gelatin is one of the proximate principles, or first compounds, of which animal bodies are formed. From this matter Mr. Weekes observed one of the insects in the very act of emerging, immediately after which, it ascended to the surface of the fluid, and sought concealment in an obscure corner of the apparatus. The insects produced by both experimentalists seem to have been the same, a species of acarus, minute and semi-transparent, and furnished with long bristles, which can only be seen by the aid of the microscope. It is worthy of remark, that some of these insects, soon after their existence had commenced, were found to be likely to extend their species. They were sometimes observed to go back to the fluid to feed, and occasionally they devoured each other. [187]

The reception of novelties in science must ever be regulated very much by the amount of kindred or relative phenomena which the public mind already possesses and acknowledges, to which the new can be assimilated. A novelty, however true, if there be no received truths with which it can be shewn in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable hearing. In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our knowledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which only could harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican solar system, we cannot doubt that it would have been universally scoffed at in the scientific world, such as it then was, or at the best interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in conformity with ideas already familiar. The experiments above described, finding a public mind which had never discovered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous, were of course ungraciously received. It was held to be impious, even to surmise that animals could have been formed through any instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill. The more likely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the insects were only developed from ova, resting either in the fluid, or in the wooden frame on which the experiments took place. On these objections the following remarks may be made. The supposition of impiety arises from an entire misconception of what is implied by an aboriginal creation of insects. The experimentalist could never be considered as the author of the existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed to him is that he arranged the natural conditions under which the true creative energy—that of the Divine Author of all things—was pleased to work in that instance. On the hypothesis here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realized under certain physical conditions. When a human hand brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute every day, and which are followed by natural results; but it did nothing more. The production of the insect, if it did take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty himself, as if he had fashioned it with hands. For the presumption that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes’s experiment, every care that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a development of the insects from ova. The wood of the frame was baked in a powerful heat; a bell-shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this the atmosphere was excluded by the constantly rising fumes from the liquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so arranged at the top of the glass, that only these fumes could pass. The water was distilled, and the substance of the silicate had been subjected to white heat. Thus every source of fallacy seemed to be shut up. In such circumstances, a candid mind, which sees nothing either impious or unphilosophical in the idea of a new creation, will be disposed to think that there is less difficulty in believing in such a creation having actually taken place, than in believing that, in two instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same insects should have chanced to arise from concealed ova, and these a species heretofore unknown.

HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT
OF THE
VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.

It has been already intimated, as a general fact, that there is an obvious gradation amongst the families of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, from the simple lichen and animalcule respectively up to the highest order of dicotyledonous trees and the mammalia. Confining our attention, in the meantime, to the animal kingdom—it does not appear that this gradation passes along one line, on which every form of animal life can be, as it were, strung; there may be branching or double lines at some places; or the whole may be in a circle composed of minor circles, as has been recently suggested. But still it is incontestable that there are general appearances of a scale beginning with the simple and advancing to the complicated. The animal kingdom was divided by Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms, or divisions, and these exhibit an unequivocal gradation in the order in which they are here enumerated:—Radiata, (polypes, &c.;) mollusca, (pulpy animals;) articulata, (jointed animals;) vertebrata, (animals with internal skeleton.) The gradation can, in like manner, be clearly traced in the classes into which the sub-kingdoms are subdivided, as, for instance, when we take those of the vertebrata in this order—reptiles, fishes, birds, mammals.

While the external forms of all these various animals are so different, it is very remarkable that the whole are, after all, variations of a fundamental plan, which can be traced as a basis throughout the whole, the variations being merely modifications of that plan to suit the particular conditions in which each particular animal has been designed to live. Starting from the primeval germ, which, as we have seen, is the representative of a particular order of full-grown animals, we find all others to be merely advances from that type, with the extension of endowments and modification of forms which are required in each particular case; each form, also, retaining a strong affinity to that which precedes it, and tending to impress its own features on that which succeeds. This unity of structure, as it is called, becomes the more remarkable, when we observe that the organs, while preserving a resemblance, are often put to different uses. For example: the ribs become, in the serpent, organs of locomotion, and the snout is extended, in the elephant, into a prehensile instrument.

It is equally remarkable that analogous purposes are served in different animals by organs essentially different. Thus, the mammalia breathe by lungs; the fishes, by gills. These are not modifications of one organ, but distinct organs. In mammifers, the gills exist and act at an early stage of the fœtal state, but afterwards go back and appear no more; while the lungs are developed. In fishes, again, the gills only are fully developed; while the lung structure either makes no advance at all, or only appears in the rudimentary form of an air-bladder. So, also, the baleen of the whale and the teeth of the land mammalia are different organs. The whale, in embryo, shews the rudiments of teeth; but these, not being wanted, are not developed, and the baleen is brought forward instead. The land animals, we may also be sure, have the rudiments of baleen in their organization. In many instances, a particular structure is found advanced to a certain point in a particular set of animals, (for instance, feet in the serpent tribe,) although it is not there required in any degree; but the peculiarity, being carried a little farther forward, is perhaps useful in the next set of animals in the scale. Such are called rudimentary organs. With this class of phenomena are to be ranked the useless mammæ of the male human being, and the unrequired process of bone in the male opossum, which is needed in the female for supporting her pouch. Such curious features are most conspicuous in animals which form links between various classes.

As formerly stated, the marsupials, standing at the bottom of the mammalia, shew their affinity to the oviparous vertebrata, by the rudiments of two canals passing from near the anus to the external surfaces of the viscera, which are fully developed in fishes, being required by them for the respiration of aerated waters, but which are not needed by the atmosphere-breathing marsupials. We have also the peculiar form of the sternum and rib-bones of the lizards represented in the mammalia in certain white cartilaginous lines traceable among their abdominal muscles. The struphionidæ (birds of the ostrich type) form a link between birds and mammalia, and in them we find the wings imperfectly or not at all developed, a diaphragm and urinary sac, (organs wanting in other birds,) and feathers approaching the nature of hair. Again, the ornithorynchus belongs to a class at the bottom of the mammalia, and approximating to birds, and in it behold the bill and web-feet of that order!

For further illustration, it is obvious that, various as may be the lengths of the upper part of the vertebral column in the mammalia, it always consists of the same parts. The giraffe has in its tall neck the same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to have a neck at all. [195] Man, again, has no tail; but the notion of a much-ridiculed philosopher of the last century is not altogether, as it happens, without foundation, for the bones of a caudal extremity exist in an undeveloped state in the os coccygis of the human subject. The limbs of all the vertebrate animals are, in like manner, on one plan, however various they may appear. In the hind-leg of a horse, for example, the angle called the hock is the same part which in us forms the heel; and the horse, and all other quadrupeds, with almost the solitary exception of the bear, walk, in reality, upon what answers to the toes of a human being. In this and many other quadrupeds the fore part of the extremities is shrunk up in a hoof, as the tail of the human being is shrunk up in the bony mass at the bottom of the back. The bat, on the other hand, has these parts largely developed. The membrane, commonly called its wing, is framed chiefly upon bones answering precisely to those of the human hand; its extinct congener, the pterodactyle, had the same membrane extended upon the fore-finger only, which in that animal was prolonged to an extraordinary extent. In the paddles of the whale and other animals of its order, we see the same bones as in the more highly developed extremities of the land mammifers; and even the serpent tribes, which present no external appearance of such extremities, possess them in reality, but in an undeveloped or rudimental state.