Life: Its True Genesis

By R. W. Wright

[Masoretic Hebrew.]--אֲׁשֶֽר זַרְעוׄ־בִל עַל־הָאָ֑רֶע׃.--

Οὗ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ χατὰ γένος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. [Septuagint.]

"Whose general principle of life, each in itself after its own kind, is upon the earth." [Correct Translation.]

Second Edition

1884

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
TO
ARTHUR E. HOTCHKISS, ESQ.
OF CHESHIRE, CONN.

Contents.

[Prefatory]

Chapter I. [Introductory.]
Chapter II. [Life--Its True Genesis.]
Chapter III. [Alternations of Forest Growths.]
Chapter IV. [The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.]
Chapter V. [Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.]
Chapter VI. [Distribution and Permanence of Species.]
Chapter VII. [What Is Life? Its Various Theories.]
Chapter VIII. [Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted.]
Chapter IX. [Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories.]
Chapter X. [Darwinism Considered from a Vitalistic Stand-point.]

Preface to Second Edition.

Here is the law of life, as laid down by the eagle-eyed prophet Isaiah, in that remarkable chapter commencing, "Ho, every one that thirsteth"--whether it be after knowledge, or any other earthly or spiritual good--come unto me and I will give you that which you seek. This is the spirit of the text, and these are the words at the commencement of the tenth verse:

"As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it (the earth) bring forth and bud (not first bud, bear seed, and then bring forth), that it (the earth) may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater (man being the only sower of seed and eater of bread): so shall my Word be (the Word of Life) that goeth forth out of my mouth (the mouth of the Lord); it shall not return unto me void (i.e., lifeless), but it shall accomplish that which I (the Lord Jehovah) please, and it (the living Word) shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

This formula of life is as true now as it was over two thousand six hundred years ago, when it was penned by the divinely inspired prophet, and it is as true now as it was then, that "Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." That is, as the rains descend and the floods come and change the face of the earth, a law, equivalent to the divine command, "Let the earth bring forth," is forever operative, changing the face of nature and causing it to give expression to new forms of life as the conditions thereof are changed, and these forms are spoken into existence by the divine fiat.

In all the alternations of forest growths that are taking place to-day, on this continent or elsewhere, this one vital law is traceable everywhere.

In the course of the next year, it will be as palpable in the Island of Java, recently desolated by the most disastrous earthquake recorded in history, as in any other portion of the earth, however free from such volcanic action. On the very spot where mountain ranges disappeared in a flaming sea of fire, and other ranges were thrown up in parallel lines but on different bases, and where it was evident that every seed, plant, tree, and thing of life perished in one common vortex of ruin, animal as well as vegetable life will make its appearance in obedience to this law, as soon as the rains shall again descend, cool the basaltic and other rocks, and the life-giving power referred to by Isaiah once more become operative. There is no more doubt of this in the mind of the learned naturalist, than in that of the most devout believer of the Bible, from which this most remarkable formula is taken.

We have no disposition to arraign the American and European "Agnostics," as they are pleased to call themselves, for using the term "Nature" instead of God, in their philosophical writings.

As long as they are evidently earnest seekers after Truth as it is to be found in nature--the work of God--they are most welcome into the temple of science, and their theories deserve our thoughtful consideration. It is only when they become dogmatic, and assert propositions that have no foundation in truth, as we sincerely believe, that we propose to break a lance at their expense, and lay bare their fallacies. We claim nothing more for ourself, as a scientific writer, than we are willing and ready to accord to them. Indeed, we would champion their right to be heard sooner than we would our own, on the principle that it is our duty to be just to others before we are generous to ourselves, or those of our own following. But our Agnostic friends should remember that when they charge us with being "dogmatic in science," the charge should be made good from a scientific stand-point, and not merely by the bandying of words.

When they tell us, for instance, that a toad has hibernated for a million years in any one of the stratified rocks near the surface of the ground, we interpose the objection that none of these batrachian forms can exist for a period of more than twelve months without air and food. And yet they have been blasted out of cavities in the surface rocks of the earth, where they have apparently lain for the period named by our scientific friends referred to. The fault is not ours, but theirs, that they are in error. Had they determined to study the subject of life, as we have done, from the Bible as well as from nature, they would have commenced at these toad-producing rocks, and worked their way upward to the source of all life, and not downward to the vanishing point--that where animal life ceases in the azoic rocks. The batrachians are low down in the scale of nature, but they have a determinate period of existence, as do all other forms of life. Try your experiments with them; see how long they will live without light, air, and food. This you can do as well as ourself. Conform to all the conditions required--the absolute exclusion of light, air, and food--and you will find that the toughest specimen experimented with is a dead batrachian inside of one year.

This experimental test should settle the question of lengthened vitality between us. There is no miracle about this matter at all, and science finds no stumbling-block in the way of a complete explication of this riddle, if, in the light of nature, there be any such riddle. We claim there is not, when we interpret nature in the light of nature's God. Let the earth, or rather its silicious and other decaying rocks, bring forth these batrachian forms. The command is imperative and not dependent upon any "seed" previously scattered or sown in the earth itself.

The father of the writer was Superintendent of the Green Mountain Turnpike Company, extending from Bellows Falls to Rutland, Vt., from 1812 to 1832, and worked every rod of that road many times over. From our earliest boyhood we accompanied him on these working trips, attended by a large force of laboring men, and our attention was early called to the characteristics of these toad-producing rocks. The rotting slates, shales, sandstones, shists, and rocks of various kinds, were often ploughed up by the road-sides, and the débris scraped into the centre of the road-beds; the heaviest ploughs of that day being used to cut through these wayside rocks, and often requiring as many as six or eight yoke of oxen to break the necessary furrow. In many of these decaying slates, shists, sandstones etc., hundreds of young toads, many of them not more than half an inch in length, were turned out at different seasons of the year, showing that they were produced independently of any parent batrachian, there being no trace of a mother toad in connection with them.

The parent toads bury themselves in the gardens and ploughed fields in the early autumn, and if they survive the severity of the winter months, may propagate their kind the second year, and probably for several years. But they require remarkably favorable conditions to continue their life for any considerable number of years in open-field propagation, while under no circumstances whatever can they make their way into these decaying rocks in order to propagate their species. The reason why such fresh specimens appear under these circumstances, and in the cavities of the rocks named, is conclusively that indicated by the prophet Isaiah, in the text quoted by us; and when Professor Agassiz was forced to admit that trout must have made their appearance in the fresh-water streams emptying into Lake Superior, instead of originating elsewhere, it is to be regretted, for the sake of science, that he did not boldly enunciate the formula of life as taught by the eagle-eyed prophet of the Bible, and not as proclaimed by the owl-eyed professors of the London University College.

What is true of the trout in these Lake Superior streams, is true of them almost everywhere, even right in the town of Cheshire, Conn., where we are inditing this preface, the 10th day of October, 1883. We recently visited the Rev. David D. Bishop, in the northeastern portion of this township, where that cultured gentleman was constructing an artificial trout-pond. It was at a season of the greatest drought known for years in that portion of the town.

The point selected for this trout-pond was at the farthest eastern source of what is known as "Honey Pot" brook in Cheshire, a famous one for trout in former years. Mr. Bishop proposed to stock his pond with the best spawn he could procure. We remarked to him that there was no need of that expense, as no stream ever produced better trout than the "Honey Pot"; and on closely examining one of the six or eight cold springs developed in his enclosure, to his surprise, not ours, we discovered several small trout, not more than six weeks old, as lively as they could well be under the blasting operations then going on there; while his children were fishing out from the rocks any number of young frogs (of the common Rana family), abounding wherever rocks and water make their appearance in similar localities. This incident was all the more remarkable for the reason that this small stream, or rather source of one, had been apparently dry for months, as had been many of the best wells in the town.

Our well, in the western part of the town, had been dug some six feet into the solid rock and an inexhaustible supply of the coldest water secured. We invited our neighbors, those living on both sides of us, as well as at some distance from us, to come and draw all the water they wanted, remarking that they might now and then draw up a small frog, originating therein, but that, by fishing him out of the pail, he would make his way to the neighboring streams not dry, and would flourish well enough as one of the Rana family. It was only to our more intelligent neighbors (such as Mr. Bishop) who had read our work on "Life," that we stopped to explain this phenomenal fact. And so of all life, wherever it appears, whether vegetable or animal. Our experiments with mosquitoes are equally conclusive. Three years ago we took two barrels of rain-water from our cistern, tightly covered; one barrel we left open to the warm sun and air, and the other we covered with the finest mosquito netting. The barrel left open was soon thronged with mosquitoes, constructing their little rafts of eggs and paving their way for the swarms of young wigglers that in the course of a week or two made their appearance in the open barrel in immense numbers. The process by which these wigglers hatch out into mosquitoes is an interesting one, and will bear the closest study, as well as scientifically pay for watching the operation. At the proper time they come to the surface of the water, undergo a palpable modification in their structure, and beautifully burgeon forth into the tormenting little insects that they are during the summer and autumn months in our Northern climate. The object of the covered barrel was to ascertain whether we could reach the conditions favorable for the development of this little pest of the Culex family, independently of the eggs of the insect itself. This required some patience and not a little care. We knew that an egg dropped through the interstices of the netting would sink to the bottom of the water and fail to germinate, as every scientist understanding the process well knows. It must be floated on the water at first, or until it reaches the point of development into a wiggler. The first step in the process of its life is as cunningly devised as the second, and the second as the third, until the full-fledged mosquito is reached.

All precautions must be taken against any mistake or error in the experiment named. But we persevered and found nature responsive to our demands. Wigglers after awhile made their appearance sparsely in the covered barrel, but the mosquitoes developed from them proved innocuous of harm, as we kept the barrel covered, and they were soon drowned in the water, not having sufficient area of flight to answer the conditions of their life. We might instance some remarkable discoveries in the vegetable world, showing conclusively that plants and trees come without seed, and we feel the more pride in this discovery because we have been assured by Prof. Othniel C. Marsh, of Yale College, a gentleman highly distinguished in his specialties, that if we would show that an oak tree came without an acorn, he would abandon Evolution and accept the exposition given by us of the Bible genesis; but we have no special ambition to make so eminent a convert from Herbert Spencer's ranks. He is a much younger man than ourself, but the great English Evolutionist or Involutionist, whichever he may ultimately decide to call himself, is about the writer's own age, and, for special reasons, he would prefer to win him to the vital side of this question, that he may act with Professor Beale in the great controversy now waging in England on this subject, and we will assure both Prof. Marsh, and his friend, Herbert Spencer, that if either of them will show that an acorn comes without an oak tree, we will abandon any position we have taken on this subject, and accept theirs, however absurdly (to our mind) it may have been taken in the past. We know that "tall oaks from little acorns grow;" but that is when man becomes the sower of seed, and knows the origin of each specific tree that is brought forth. When we talk about the squirrel, or the birds becoming the "sowers of seeds," especially the acorns, we are talking at random, and without any certain knowledge. This we say with all due deference and respect to our learned Agnostic friends, and wish they would treat their vitalistic brothers with the same becoming courtesy.

In a work which we have now in preparation for the press, to be entitled "Biodynamics; or, The Laws of Life," we shall give this "seed question" a more exhaustive inquiry than we have yet done.

Our proofs in regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so conspicuously in the historic page.

When the Nile overflowed its banks in ancient times, and caused the young frogs to swarm up as a pest upon the Egyptians, the same law of life was operative in that land, as when warm thunder-showers pelt the earth with us in the summer season, causing hundreds and thousands of these batrachians to come out of the gritty waysides, and swarm along our highways and by-ways, leading ignorant and thoughtless people to suppose that they have rained down from the sky. The simple fact is, that the earth was commanded to bring them forth, and that great mother of all vegetable and animal life is obeying the command to-day, just as she did in the beginning.

One of the greatest errors that science has yet committed, or rather that scientific men have stumbled upon, is the theory that all living forms have appeared but once in time and place, and that they have thence diffused themselves, in pairs, throughout the globe, as from specific centres of origin. In the primeval oceans, whenever and wherever the environing conditions of matter were the same or identical, the like living forms made their appearance and flourished for hundreds and thousands of years, and finally disappeared, in a fossilized state, as their environing conditions were changed. They came not genetically--as in pairs--but thronged the seas in thousands and millions as the divine edict went forth.

As another conclusive proof, to our mind, of the existence of this law of life, we instance the case of the mango-tree growing in the West India Islands, especially along the sea-shore, where it becomes the natural habitat of the oyster. It is the belief of some ignorant persons that the oyster climbs these trees and deposits its spawn or "spat" upon the extreme limbs of the same as they bend down toward the water. This is manifestly an error, and belongs to the same class of fallacies as the common impression that toads rain down from the sky. The smaller mango-trees growing about the bays and inlets of these islands, furnish, as we have said, a natural habitat for the oyster, and as the salt sea-spray washes their roots and the bark of their trunks, the long thin-shelled oysters of that region make their appearance thereon without the presence of spawn, just as they do when old oyster-shells are dumped along our sand-banks in New England. On these dumped shells oysters will be produced abundantly, simply because the conditions are favorable, and not in consequence of the presence of "spat." Oysters have little, if any, locomotive power, and can no more climb the mango-tree than they can scale the cliffs of the Azores. The reason why they hang in pendent clusters from the extreme boughs of the mango in the West India Islands is, that these boughs are sprayed upon by the rippling waters, and the environing conditions being favorable, the indifferent oyster of that region makes its appearance.

There has been no migration of the oyster from one centre of origin to another, any more than there has been a transference of the white whale from the arctic seas to the fiery equator. Every thing has its place in nature, and comes with or without seed as natural laws determine. During the last year I have gathered cedar trees that did not make their appearance till late in August and September, long after the seed of the previous year had entirely disappeared, and there was no more life in them than there is in acorns that have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times in bulk. And the late Henry D. Thoreau, in his "Excursions," says that they will not stand one such shipment to Europe, and that every acorn that does not sprout by the end of November of the year it matures, is hopelessly a dead acorn. This is in harmony with our experience, and we have no doubt of the correctness of his observations. How absurd, then, to suppose that acorns can retain their vitality so as to germinate after years of out-door or other exposure. The seeds of forest-trees that mature in May and June, or the majority of them at least, have to be planted in those months, as all persons engaged in forest culture well know. This is specially true of cedars and oaks, as well as of elms and maples.

Study the paleontological facts as given by Prof. Frederick McCoy, of the University of Melbourne, in Australia, a gentleman highly distinguished for his learning and research. He has explored portions of that continent as far down as the azoic rocks, and made many important discoveries as to the past life of the globe. His researches have been especially rich in the Cambrian or Lower Silurian epochs, and have led to many modifications in the classification of the various forms of life pervading those earlier periods, and we may say that the facts he has brought to light tend strongly to show the correctness of our theory as taken from the biblical text; as, for instance, the Trilobites, occurring so abundantly in what is known as the Utica slates. Wherever the slates make their appearance, whether in Australia, America, or any portion of Europe, this fossil, characteristic of the Silurian and Devonian systems, appeared, not so much in time and place as in extended localities and conditions--indicating the presence of a law of life such as we have enunciated. We once inquired of the elder Prof. Silliman how long it took for the formation of one of these periods or systems? His reply was curt and pertinent: "It took long enough, young man!" That satisfied us at the time, and we have never asked the question since. It is prying beyond scientific depth, and the ablest scholars in the world will so regard it in the end.

All fossils follow the same developmental law, and seem to have been governed by corresponding conditions everywhere. The doctrine of "similia similibus gignuntur"--similar conditions producing similar forms--obtains universally. The Graptolites, occurring in the bituminous shales of the Silurian sandstone period, afford only another instance of the same law to which we have called the attention of our readers. In fact, the annals of natural history abound in the most conclusive proofs, as well in the fossilized as the living world, of what the paramount text of the Bible teaches us.

When Professor Ehrenberg, one of the most distinguished classifiers of minute forms of life in the world, declared, as he recently did before the Royal Geographical Society of London, that there was "a great invisible rock-and earth-forming life in nature," he came pretty near enunciating a great truth in science; and had he connected his language with the induction of "environing conditions" and the sequence of life therefrom, he would have accomplished what we undertook to do in our work begun several years ago, but not completed and published until 1880. For it will be seen that we had been gathering the material for "Life: Its True Genesis" for many years before we sat down to the task of writing it.

When we said to one of our most intimate college friends that we were less than six months preparing it for the press, we stated what was literally true; but we had no intention of giving him to understand that we had spent only that time in gathering the vast amount of material at our command--twenty times as much as we could possibly use in the preparation of such a volume for the press. The long months and even years of toil and study spent by us in the needful preparation, were a part of the labor, as every author, writing intelligently on any subject, knows. The immense amount of care and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his paper on the Archæopterix, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every one who enters the temple of science with a devout wish to attain success.

It will be apparent to the religious mind of this country and England, if not to that of Mr. Tyndall himself, that, if the exegetical rendering we have extended to the Bible be correct, there is no necessity whatever for the vast uncomputed periods of time intervening the different geological strata, to which that scientific gentleman refers in his fanciful musings upon the Matterhorn!

Nor is there any such necessity for it, if what Professor Ehrenberg says be true in regard to the basaltic rocks thrown up by volcanic action in the Island of St. Paul. For if these rocks possess this mysterious power of life, He who made them manifestly imparted it. One thing is certain, at least, the rocks did not make themselves; nor did they impart to themselves any life-originating power after they were made. The same power that originated them originated all their characteristic properties, and the same may be said of Professor Tyndall's "sky-mist" or any other mistier name suggested by scientific men. We have only to take the "Thesaurus" of the Silurian period, and connect it with the induction of the biblical text, and we shall see that the forms characteristic of that period appeared not only synchronously in time and space, but also in physical conditions, and consequently, that no immense epochs were expended in the propagation, of species on the "two-pair" theory of our materialistic friends. They simply flourished over vast areas for a while, and were then locked up as fossils where they are now found. How long it took for this transformation to take place is manifestly beyond any data we may now have for determining. In the case of some artificial baths in which crystalline forms appear, we know that it takes only a few weeks at least, and why should natural processes be any more delinquent or defective in their operation than those that are purely artificial? Remember that we are not "musing on the Matterhorn" as was the gifted English naturalist, but upon the text of the equally gifted Isaiah, and pondering the works of God as seen by the devout prophet in his day. When Mr. Tyndall can tell us how long it took God to lift the towering Matterhorn from its base, he will be in a frame of mind to answer the other problems involved in the controversy between us. In an instant--the twinkling of an eye--some of these phenomena have occurred, and recent events, such as wide volcanic disturbances, show how idle it is for man to place a limit to the power of the Most High. Even the "red snow," unmistakably a vegetal formation, appearing at times on the loftier Alps, is as much a proof of God's power as the ragged mountain peaks on which it appears--covering vast areas within a few hours' time.

When such men as the late Professor Silliman, and Professor Dana, Sen'r, of Yale College, take up the Bible genesis, and speak in high commendation of its value to science, it is idle for the Agnostics of that or any other institution of learning to speak sneeringly of their efforts. They both know (for the elder Benjamin Silliman "still lives") that the first command of this genesis was, for the earth to bring forth its vegetation, not from "seed" distinctively so-called, but from the germinal principles of life therein; what Ehrenberg calls the "rock-and earth-forming life" or power of life in matter.

That the second command was, for the waters of the earth to bring forth their specific forms of life, including the birds; just where science now asserts they originally came from.

And that the third command was, for the earth to bring forth the beasts thereof, and every creeping thing thereon. Here the "rock-and earth-forming" power of life ceased, and the language of the genesis changes. It is no longer "Let the earth bring forth," but let the Divine energy intervene!

"Let us (the divine Trinity in Unity) make man in our own image"--after our own conception of what he should be--the being of two worlds, the material and spiritual; and man was made accordingly. God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a "living soul." This is the record--brief, grand, historic. No "evolution," no "involution," no word without sense or meaning. He who was to have dominion, in his limited sphere, over all the earth, thus came in due time for a wiser and grander purpose than man has yet seen; but which, in the providence of God and the light of His word, he will yet come to see, as scientific truth advances with the march of religious knowledge. Heaven speed the day when this millennium of truth shall dawn upon us here!

In this remarkable genesis we have a bridge that spans the chasm between the man and the anthropoid ape as no other bridge spans it. It is a bridge over which is flung the living garment of God, and angelic hosts may pass it to and fro, as well as the master-minds of our own and future ages. It takes man out of the category of a "beast of the earth," and places him where all soul-aspiration lifts us--lifts even Robert G. Ingersoll, in his higher inspirational moods, or will lift him when his extreme material dogmatisms and false teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will. Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France. We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career for good or for evil.

We had proposed embodying in this Preface one or two caustic reviews of our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to The National Quarterly Review, for the captious manner in which it treated us after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and enormities," it charged us with certain unscrupulous methods of criticism,--such as putting language into Mr. Darwin's mouth that he never thought of uttering, etc., etc. And as this pretentious Quarterly put several questions to us, such as "When and where the great Evolutionist had taught any such doctrine as this?" we ventured to reply as courteously as we knew how. We endeavored to treat our reviewer fairly, as he had handsomely accorded to us the credit of "searching the fields of natural science, lance in hand, to deal hard thrusts at impious skeptics, materialists, and evolutionists--of which Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bastian fare the most severely." But we had no thought of using these offensive adjectives toward either of the distinguished gentlemen named, and did not so use them; however "unscrupulous" our methods may have been in other respects. Our reply was unnoticed by the bulky Quarterly, and we were content with knowing that it was received by its editor, and shared the fate of all intrusive communications which it is easier to throw into the waste-basket, especially in hot weather, than to answer in the interests of science, when such answers are difficult to be made. This was the first and only discussion we attempted to provoke with our "exhaustive Reviewers," and it will, in all probability, be the last. Little is gained by these polemical controversies, when conducted in the spirit of unfairness, or with greater asperity than the true interests of journalism demand. The beauty of its kindly advice to us, as a "scientific critic," was that every word of it came back, as a cruel boomerang, into the writer's own face.

But this is enough. For the last three years we have been mostly engaged in writing another book, the character of which is already sufficiently indicated in this Preface. The reasons why we have been led to adhere to our original purpose of making this a "Bible Genesis," as The National Quarterly Review speaks of it, are best known to our more intimate friends, and we do not propose to disappoint them in their expectations.

If we have failed to make our theory understood by others, we regret it; if others fail to understand the inspired text, it is manifestly a matter for them to regret, and for us to deplore.

To those who have spoken kindly of "Life: Its True Genesis," we return our thanks: to those who have extended to it their sharpest criticisms, in what they believe the true interests of science, we also return our thanks. We have no fear that Truth will be crushed in this contest:

"Truth crushed to earth shall heavenward rise again,
Like wayside flowers that lift their heads, aglow
With a far sweeter fragrance when they've been
All rudely trampled on by hostile foe,
Than when in Flora's gentle arms they've lain
The long night through, and wake at early dawn
To greet Aurora--jewelled queen of morn!"

R. W. Wright.

West Cheshier, Conn., Oct. 12, 1883.

Prefatory.

The office of a preface is twofold; first, to introduce the author to the public; second, to introduce his work. As the writer seeks no personal introduction, beyond what a favorable or unfavorable reception of his work may give him, he leaves the more formal, if not formidable branch of salutation untouched.

The work has cost him some labor, as the reader will see. The field he has traversed is vast and varied, and the facts he has gathered are numerous and from many and diversified sources--all bearing more or less conclusively on the one vital point he seeks to establish, viz: That the primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living things, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and that they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, whenever and wherever the necessary environing conditions exist.

The foundation of this emphatic formula we find in the Bible Genesis, in the words given on our title-page, which are more accurately translated in the Septuagint, than in our common English version of the Old Testament. The words are to be found in the 11th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, and the writer confidently believes that they contain the true Genesis of Life, although entirely overlooked, heretofore, by both the biblical and scientific scholar.

In the work which he here gives to the public, he will endeavor to show that all the vital phenomena of our globe, with the single exception named, find their complete explication in this Genesis of Life; and that we have only to take the scientific Genesis out of some of its more imposing categories, to make the two either entirely harmonize, or fall into the same lines of incidence in human thought.

Science has long taught that the absence of necessary physiological conditions results everywhere in the disappearance of vital phenomena; by reversing its logical methods, it will also find that the presence of these necessary conditions results everywhere in the appearance of vital phenomena. Take, for instance, the vegetation of Northern Europe, where it is known that the oak succeeded the pine, and the beech the oak, after each had held possession of the soil for we know not how many thousand years. In bringing about the necessary conditions of soil, the pine paved the way for the oak, and that in turn paved the way for the beech. Neither sprang from the other, nor did the "selection of the fittest" have anything to do with the appearance or disappearance of either. Each yielded fruit "after his kind," whose "seed" (germinal principle of life) was in itself, i.e., after its own kind, upon the earth, and made its appearance spontaneously,--that is, without the presence of natural seed,--whenever the necessary environing conditions favored.

And the same law of vegetal propagation is everywhere operative to-day, in the alternations of forest growths, the spontaneous appearance of oak forests where pine have been cleared away, and vice versa, in some parts of the country, where heavy forests of oak timber have been felled. So with the new growths of timber springing up in the paths of tornadoes, over large burnt districts, in soils brought up from below the last glacial drift, and in hundreds of other instances which the reader will find conclusively verified in these pages,--all making their appearance without the possible intervention of natural seeds.

The great value of the Septuagint, as compared with other versions of the Hebrew Bible, will appear from the fact that it is older by many hundred years than any manuscript copy of the Hebrew text now extant. It was undoubtedly translated at Alexandria, in Egypt, as early as the third century before Christ, while the oldest known Hebrew MS. is a Pentateuch roll dating no further back than A. D. 580. Its translators had before them much older and more perfect MSS. than any that survived to the time of the masoretic recension, when an attempt was made to give uniformity to the readings and renderings of the Hebrew text by means of the vowel points, diacritical signs, terminal letters, etc., all of which are now subject to rejection by the best Oriental scholarship.

According to Irenæus, this Greek version was rendered at the request of Ptolemy Lagi, in order to add to the treasures of the Alexandrian library, and it no doubt derived its name from the number of Hebrew and Hellenistic scholars,--probably the most eminent to be found in that day,--employed upon the work. The version comes, therefore, with paramount authority to our own times; and we accept its Greek rendering as the highest and most conclusive evidence of the authenticity of the text, and the "new genesis of life" we derive therefrom.

Σπέρμα (as contained in the Septuagint) has almost an identical signification with the Hebrew word ZRA. It means the "germ of anything," or the "germinal principle of life," as contained in anything that lives or grows. No one will claim that it is used in its literal sense of "seed," in the text. For, when the divine command was issued, there was no plant or tree, and, presumably, had been none upon the earth from which seed could have been derived. The word was used in its larger and more comprehensive (that is, metaphorical) sense, as the "germinal principle of life in matter," or precisely in the sense in which the Greek stoics used it in their philosophy. Both Theophrastus and Diogenes use the terms σπερματ´κοὶ γόγοι expressing "the laws of generation contained in matter"--precisely the meaning we attach to it in its textual connection. The eleventh verse should read, therefore, as follows: "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose germinal principle of life, each in itself after its kind, is upon the earth"

We accept this rendering of "the seventy," because they had the most complete and perfect Hebrew MSS. before them, and were no doubt better scholars, and far more competent renderers of the original text than the Masorites who came some seven or eight hundred years after them.

But this is not the most important point of inquiry in this connection. The materialistic objector may say: "Admit all this; grant that the true rendering is here given; grant even that the true law of vegetal development and growth is here enunciated; what has 'star-eyed science' to do with the 'odium theologicum?'" We answer, nothing. We would bury both theological rancor and atheistical pretension in the same barrow, and agree never to "peep and botanize" over their common grave. But if a great scientific principle--one that fits into all the phenomenal facts of nature--explains them all, and is, in turn, explained by them--be found in the Hebrew Hagiographa, of what less value is it to science than if it had been originally enunciated by Aristotle or Plato? Or--to make the inquiry still sharper and more emphatic--of what less value is it to science than if it had originally come from Professor Tyndall or Mr. Herbert Spencer?

Take the "biblical genesis" as we have enunciated and explained it--with all the facts crowded into these explanatory pages--and science has no longer any genetic mystery to brood over, further than that every operation of nature is a mystery into which it is useless for scientific speculation to pry. We know what nature does, or may know it by the proper scrutiny, but we shall never know the causes of things, any more than we shall find God at the bottom of Herbert Spencer's crucible, or at the top of his ladder of synthesis. In the light of the Bible genesis, science can account for the origin of the stalwart oak or the lordly pine, without going back to any mycological or cryptogamic forms, to follow down an ever-changing vital plexus that is as likely to land in a buttonwood tree as an oak, or in a hemlock as a pine,--in fact, quite as likely to land in a carnivorous animal as in an insectivorous plant. "Let the earth bring forth," is still the eternal fiat,--just as implicitly obeyed to-day as it was in the world's primeval history, when an exuberance of endogenous vegetation laid the foundation of the coal measures. It requires no greater effort on the part of nature to produce the pine, the oak, the beech, the hickory--all of which we see springing directly from primordial germs to-day--than it did to produce the lowest vegetal organism, from an invisible, indestructible "vital unit," or Darwinian gemmule, thousands of years ago.

He who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and in whose sight a thousand years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest, rejection of the unfit--force-correlations, molecular machinery, transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates, molécules organiques, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulæ, with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed for the last fifteen or twenty years.

Believing that the time has come to call for "a halt" in scientific speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter, motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence to the public. [[1]]

R. W. Wright.

West Cheshire, Conn.

True Genesis.

Chapter I.

Introductory.

It is undeniably true that the progress of scientific thought and speculative inquiry, both in this country and in Europe, is rapidly tending towards a purely materialistic view of the universe, or one that utterly excludes the ancient and long-predominating metaphysical conceptions of Life, to say nothing of the more regnant and universally prevailing conception of a God. And it is quite as undeniable that the current of experimental research and investigation is setting, with equal rapidity, in the same direction. According to the views of many of our more advanced chemists, physiologists, and other scientific and speculative writers and thinkers--those whose experimental investigations have, it is claimed, reached the ultimate implications of all material substance--there are but two immutable, indestructible, and thoroughly persistent elements in the universe--Matter and Motion. Everything else, they confidently assert, is either purely phenomenal, or else essentially mutable, ephemeral, transitory. Force, according to their theory, is only another name for motion or its correlates, and, hence, the two terms are interchangeably used by them in predicating their ultimate conclusions respecting matter.

Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, molecular force, and even life itself, are only so many manifestations or expressions, they claim, of one and the same force in the universe--Motion, With the exception of matter, it is the only self-persistent, permanently enduring, ever active and reactive agency.

Light, they say, is dependent, heat conditional, electricity and magnetism more or less phenomenal, chemical affinity and molecular force mere modes or correlated forms of motion, and all-pervading life itself a mere postulate of the schools, or at best only the result of the dynamic force of molecules.

Deem not this collocation simply a burlesque on Scientific categories. Professor Bastian, in his great work on the "Beginnings of Life," has unhesitatingly said: "The 'vitalists' must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of a special 'vital force' whose peculiar office it is to effect the transformation of physical forces. The notion that such a force does exist, is based on no evidence; it is a mere postulate. The assumption of its existence carries with it nothing but confusion and contradiction, because the very supposition that it exists, and does so act, is totally averse to the general doctrine of the correlation of forces."

And this defiant challenger of the "vitalists," who thus half-sneeringly speaks of those who believe that the vital forces of the universe are among the highest potential factors expressed therein, is one who, for the last decade and a half, has mostly lived in the ephemeromorphic world, and who, in diving into the "beginnings of life," has so far lost his way that the all-glorious end of it is as much an inexplicable mystery to him now, as when he was more successfully expounding pathological anatomy and ruthlessly hacking away at anatomical subjects over the dissecting-slab of the London University College. Had he spent less time over this dissecting-slab, and more in studying the marvellous manifestations of life in its outspoken beauty of leaf, bud, flower, fruit--things of not mere guess and fancy--he would undoubtedly have had a higher appreciation of what is most vital in nature, and less of what is simply material in a non-functional sense. With Mr. Herbert Spencer, he gratuitously sneers at the "old specific-creation hypothesis," or the divine fiat in the beginning; but without that fiat, where would he find his ephemeromorphs? or even the dead tissues used in his organic infusions for the vainest of all human endeavors--that of producing life, or seeking to produce it, de novo? He is so immeasurably disgusted with the vitalists that he hardly allows himself to speak of "life" or even use the term "vital" as applied to its simplest manifestations, without quotationizing them as terms to provoke both incredulity and derision.

The world may, however, overlook much of this in him, in view of his past professional pursuits, as well as in consideration of his eminent services as a specialist in science. The dissecting-room of a university is not the most desirable place in the world for profoundly studying the vital forces of nature. It is too grim and ghastly a repository of dead men's skulls, and "holes where eyes did once inhabit," in which to regard "life's enchanting cup" as one sparkling to the brim. Detaching a muscle here, and laying bare another there; taking out a sightless eye in one subject, and putting the dissecting-knife deep into the pulseless heart of another; cutting the fragments of a human body into shreds and tatters over one dissecting-slab, and loading down another with splintered bones and mangled hands and limbs, is not exactly the sort of occupation to enkindle the highest enthusiasm for "life," in any of its more manifold phases in nature. Too many lifeless notions get crammed into the head--to say nothing of baffled endeavor in the pursuit--to admit of the more conclusive and satisfactory inductions respecting living organisms.

But why should an assumption of the existence of life carry with it any greater "confusion and contradiction," than a like assumption respecting either matter or motion? Simply because the materialists insist, in their logical inductions, upon so distributing the terms of their syllogism that only a negative conclusion shall follow.

"Matter and motion," they say, are alone indestructible.

Life is neither matter nor motion,

Therefore: Life is not indestructible.

This syllogism is manifestly unanswerable, if there be no fallacy in the distribution of its major and minor terms. But wherein lies the incompatibility of reversing the order of its terms, so as to prove that neither matter nor motion is indestructible? And would such a judgment, thus derived, be any more spurious, the process of reasoning any more illicit, or the conclusion any less unanswerable? We might as well say that neither matter nor motion is an absolute entity in the universe, without some apprehensive intelligence, or rational intuition therein, to embrace them as distinct concepts or objects of thought; nor can either have the least conceivable attribute without some co-existing intelligence to ascribe it. For to ascribe an attribute, is to conceive or think of such attribute. And as our general conceptions are conceded to be realities, even by the materialists themselves, it necessarily follows that this conscious ego--this thing that conceives, thinks, ascribes attributes--is either co-existent with matter, or else antedates it in the order of existence. And here--at this identical point in the argument--we are irresistibly forced back, in our inductive processes, to the theological conception of a God--the one supreme Ego of the universe--from whom alone all our intuitions of consciousness, as well as apprehensive intelligence, is derived.

We can no more get rid of these inductive processes than we can change the order of nature or reverse the inevitable laws of thought. Hence, we are constantly driven to formulate the following, or some equivalent inductions:--

1. Cause must exist before effect.

2. Without some vital principle, therefore, preëxisting as a cause, there can be no life-manifestation.

3. But there can be no life-manifestation without organic structure.

4. The reverse of this proposition is also true.

5. Which, therefore, precedes the other as a cause, and which follows as an effect?

6. Nothing can organize itself. To do so, it must contain within itself both the operating cause and the resulting effect, which is at once an incongruent and conflictive judgment.

7. But the thing that organizes must exist before the thing organized, whether it be a vital principle or an intelligent agency.

8. Hence Life, either as a preëxisting cause or vital agency, must precede both animal and vegetal organism. Again:--

9. Cause is that which operates to produce an effect, as effect is that which is produced by an operating cause.

10. But whatever operates to produce a life-manifestation must precede it as an operating cause.

11. Life, therefore, whether as a blind or intelligent force or agency, must precede its own manifestation; that is, must exist as an operating cause before there is any produced effect.

12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.

13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.

And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there be can no matter without an existing ego, in some state of consciousness in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[[2]] On what, therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion, except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that "breath of life," which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality. All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's "image of a rock," or Bishop Berkeley's "ghost of a departed quantity," as he once defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The "materialists," must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to assume the existence of either matter or motion, since both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more potent agency of "vital force," as expressed in thought, volition, and consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical existence.

The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work, with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however, that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause, which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents, remain as they are.

Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the Hagiographa, or "sacred writings" of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle, as against the validity of these "sacred writings," the advocates of the latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much neglected, and inaccurately translated passage of this Genesis, a key that unlocks the whole "mystery of life," as the great battle is now waging between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no equally limited compass, in ancient or modern manuscript or published volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific value as in the first chapter of Genesis.

In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--

1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence "without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in space.

2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define "gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis, and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.

3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.

4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been "guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of this most remarkable genesis.

5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature, either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind," and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called, would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr. Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."

6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing (except man) "after his kind."

But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and that of materialistic science:--

THE BIBLE GENESIS.

1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as perfect of its kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs," declared to be in themselves upon the earth.

3. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing to grow, out of the ground, every tree that is "pleasant to the sight and good for food," also every plant of the field "before it was in the earth," and every herb of the field "before it grew."

4. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the waters of the earth to bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

5. The Bible Genesis represents God as causing the earth to bring forth every living creature "after his kind," enumerating them in the order in which they appear in geological distribution.

6. The Bible Genesis represents God as making man in his own image, after he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every other living creature.

7. The Bible Genesis represents God as breathing into man "the breath of life," and he became a "living soul,"

8. The Bible Genesis represents God as creating the earth for the abode of man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth.

9. The Bible genesis represents God as exercising a moral government over man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.

10. In fine, the Bible Genesis represents man as only "a little lower than the angels."

THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.

1. The Scientific genesis virtually eliminates the idea of a God from the universe, by assigning to natural causes all the diversified and myriad-formed phases and changes that have taken place therein, extending through an infinite duration of past time, and constantly confronted by an infinite duration of time to come.

2. The Scientific Genesis represents every living thing as more or less imperfect of its kind, but advancing towards perfection by some underlying law of variability or selection of the fittest, or by gradual development from lower into higher organisms.

3. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of any divine agency in the growth of plants and trees, and insists that "life," in all its manifold phases, is only "an undiscovered correlative of motion," or, at best, only a sort of tertium quid between matter and motion.

4. The Scientific Genesis represents all fishes, amphibia, reptiles, birds, etc., as travelling along their respective lines of developmental progress and differentiation, from points far back in geologic time, and constantly working their way up from cold and flabby creatures into those of higher cerebral activity, and brighter and more varied life, until gigantic winged reptiles mounted into the air and became birds.

5. The Scientific Genesis attributes the appearance of every living creature upon the earth to a law of "evolution," by which one thing constantly overlaps another, forming a sort of stairway for lower organisms to climb into higher, without regard to "kind," or even orders, genera, or species.

6. The Scientific Genesis distinctly takes issue with that of the Bible respecting the divine origin of man, and insists that he has been climbing up from protoplasmic matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms, until he finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into man.

7. The Scientific Genesis emphatically repudiates the idea of a soul as thus derived, and even insists that "conscience," the highest known moral factor in the universe, is only a modified expression of the social instincts of the lower animals--the difference being in degree only, not in kind.

8. The Scientific Genesis promptly takes issue with this creative plan and purpose--insisting, in the dazzling speculations and fancies of its adherents, that well known physical and physiological laws have worked out all these phenomenal aspects and changes, and that these laws are wholly indifferent as to whether man shall have dominion over the shark and the tiger, or they dominion over him.

9. The Scientific Genesis illogically insists that "natural laws,"--those expressing no sovereign will, and having "no seat in the bosom of God"--are fully adequate for the government of man, he exercising to that end all the higher powers with which, by evolutional changes, he has become endowed.

10. While the Scientific Genesis represents him as only a little higher than the apes!

And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical, devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.

But the most important of these antithetical statements, so far at least as modern scientific research and inquiry are concerned, is that which represents the germs of all living things--man alone excepted--as being implanted in the earth itself. We take the definition of the Hebrew word ZRA, translated "seed" in the 11th verse of the 1st chapter of Genesis, from Professor Edward Leigh, of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in his "Critica Sacra," first published in 1662:--"Sparsit, asparsit, cum aspersione fudit, diffudit," etc, that is, "something sown, scattered, universally diffused, everywhere implanted," as a germ in the earth. That the Hebrew word ZRA. does not mean, in this connection, the seed of a plant or tree, is manifest from the fact that the first plant or tree, from which "seed" could have been derived, had not yet appeared upon the earth.

The exact translation is, "whose primordial germs are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the earth," implanted therein, as the "diversa diversorum viventium primordia" of Dr. William Harvey, were originally implanted in the earth. This illustrious physician and biologist, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, not only taught the doctrine expressed in his phrase "omne vivum ex ovo," but that of "primordial germs"--living indestructible "principles of life"--existing in the earth itself. For it is evident that he uses the word "egg," in its more general sense, as designating any material substance capable of receiving his "primordium" (first principle of life) and developing itself into a living organism.

The whole controversy, as at present conducted by the materialists and vitalists, resolves itself into this one question:--Whether life springs from what Dr. Harvey calls a "primordium,"--a pre-existing vital germ or unit--or whether it originates de novo, as the materialists assert, from infusions contained in their experimental flasks, or from plastide particles contained in protoplasmic matter, or from the still more daring hypothesis of "molecular machinery" as worked by molecular force? It is certain that the materialistic theory is quite as inexplicable, on the basis of analogical reasoning and microscopical investigation, as that indicated in the Bible Genesis; while the vitalistic theory would seem to be more in harmony with vital phenomena, and hence the more rational hypothesis of the two. Besides, the Bible Genesis answers to the logical necessity of predicating a determinate cause for each and every vital effect, or each living organism apparently springing from plasmic conditions or mere structureless matter. Whenever the seeds of plants or trees are actually planted or sown in the earth, this logical necessity rests on an induction impregnably laid in cause and effect; while the materialistic dogma, nihil ex nihilo, would necessitate a like induction wherever seed is not sown. In either case the change that ensues is manifestly due to vital properties, whether the same be inhering in the seed, or in necessary environing conditions. And the vital processes are the same, with the single difference as to actual environment.

The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds themselves.

At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only, but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix, or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these "primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of a tiger in an Indian jungle.

Teach us to know what nature does, not what she is; and whatever of "divine revelation" is vouchsafed us, whether it be found in the majestic "Poem of the Dawn," attributed to the inspired pen of Moses, in the "myriad-minded Shakespeare," or the irradiated and deeply-prophetic soul of a Shelley, let us accept it with thanks, if not to the inspired authors themselves, at least to "the great Giver of life" who imparted their inspiration.

We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr. Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and, at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore, by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed" ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this connection.

The evidence we shall present in reference to the alternations of forest growths, and the impossibility of accounting for them on any theory of seed-distribution--alternations covering, in many instances, independent forests springing up on a vast scale--and the still wider dispersion of domestic weeds, grasses, forage plants, etc. in localities where they were never known before, will be conclusive, we think, of the correctness of our position, that the Bible Genesis contains the true key to the mystery of life. Bear in mind that the true theory of life, whenever it shall be reached in human conception and formulated into definitely-known processes of action, must satisfactorily explain all life-manifestations, as Newton's theory of gravitation accounts for the movements of all celestial bodies. And the simpler the theory when once formulated--the more perfectly it falls into the grooves of definitely-expressed thought, and the more harmoniously it adapts itself to all vital manifestations--the more conclusive must be the induction on which it rests.[[3]] The emphatic statement that the "primordial germs" of all living things are in the earth, from the lowest infusorial form to the highest vital organism below "specifically-created" man, when supplemented by the scientific statement that "vital units" make their appearance whenever environing conditions favor, is conclusively a theory which accounts for all the life-manifestations heretofore occurring upon our globe.

And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein there is functional activity; while a state, or status, is an incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and its status--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity dependent on organization. To assume that this efficient cause is simply the effect or result of organization--one of its dependent conditions--is begging the whole question, and, at the same time, discarding a very important element in the problem--that of conditional environment. What this efficient cause is, is a question that awakens no responsive inquiry. It strikes its roots too deeply into the intuitions of consciousness for the soul to give back an intelligible reply. Certain it is that neither metaphysical speculation, nor scientific inquiry, will ever enable us to reach the roots of this question, or extract from them the first quantitive essence of life itself.

We shall also consider, in their proper place, the various theories of life which have been advanced from time to time by the materialists, in their avowed hostility to current religious beliefs, and especially those founded on the sacred Hebrew writings, and the supplementary teachings of the New Testament. And to show the extent of this hostility, and the real animus of those waging it, it is only necessary to refer to the great central doctrine of the Sacred Scriptures, that Life--natural, spiritual, eternal--is "the gift of God." And this is the grand corner-stone of all religious edifices--those erected by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and even the inhabitants of farther India. Materialistic science must, therefore, deal its first and most effective blows at "Life," either as a theory to be resolutely assailed and overthrown, or else thoroughly ignored and set aside, in the more imposing and august temple of Science. Hence, the reader will find, in none of the great encyclopedias prepared under the supervision of scientific men, the slightest mention whatever of "Life" as a subject worthy of consideration at their hands. It finds, of course, its meagre definitional place in the dictionaries, but the bulky and more exhaustive encyclopedias have no room for it, except as it may be defined, under some correlate of motion, as "the latent possibility of a nebula," or of "undifferentiated primeval mist," originally pervading the interplanetary spaces.

We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall, Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting "life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of facts only, and the latter entirely on preconceived and prejudicial notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote of the universe:--

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul."

The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires" more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.

Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.

When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter, between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which no daring mortal could ever pass.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the "Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end, and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.

The bridge will never be built.

Chapter II.

Life--Its True Genesis.

The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a "correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.

In all the vast realm of Reality there is no more conclusive and palpable fact than that "life" exists--appearing wherever the bright light flashes, the loving raindrop falls, the dancing brook ripples, the sparkling streamlet murmurs, and the broad river flows to mingle with the sea. All along this bright pathway of sunlight and cool translucent wave, this wonderful principle of vitality manifests itself in all-glorious life--filling the air with balmy odors; making perennial bud, leaf and flower, speeding from sire to son, from heart to heart, from spirit to spirit, from age to age, from time into eternity.[[4]] For like all living principles, in this realm of Reality, it cannot die. It is immortal in its primal source, immortal all along its bright pathway, immortal as it flows onward to eternity, immortal in its return to the bosom of God. It is no postulate, no corollary, no mere hypothetical judgment; no "undiscovered correlative of motion," no "baseless fabric of a vision"--but the one grand comprehensive Datum on which all the objective, as well as subjective, data of the universe rest. It is the same "spirit that moved upon the face of the depths," in that majestic Dawn of Creation when the "evening and the morning were the first day;" the same spirit that "upholds the order of the heavens;" that pervades the vast realm of Reality, that flashes in the bright sunlight, descends in the loving raindrop, ripples in the dancing brook, sparkles in the murmuring stream, and forever flows onward bearing its primal fulness to the sea.

To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says: "Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces." And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."

Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which the command "to bring forth" was issued:--

1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.

2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, the fowl of the air.

3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature, and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.

4. Let us make man in our own image.

And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds, with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection. Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe. This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking Hesiod, who suffered no important fact of the Cosmos to escape him, would have given us some hint of it in his "Works and Days;" for Greece was, even in his early day, largely the recipient of Phoenician learning and literature, as she was certainly Phoenicia's foster-child in letters.

But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate observations of modern geological science. Before there could have appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by, inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first successfully entered upon by the Abbé Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically established by inductive methods.

Nihil ex nihilo is conceded to be as conclusive an induction as omne vivum ex vivo. That is, as without some chemical unit--some primary least considered as a whole--there can be no chemical action, so without some vital unit, in the same primary sense, there can be no vital manifestation. The doctrine of "chemical units" is universally conceded, and that of "morphological units" almost as universally claimed. What greater incongruity is there, then, in assuming the presence between the two of a physiological or vital unit? [[5]] At all events, it is as impossible to demonstrate the non-existence of the one unit as the other. And so long as legitimate induction supports the doctrine of the Bible Genesis, it is useless to indulge in a contrary assumption which is wholly without verification or proof.

But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact, there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals. Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis? Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations, which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind, it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter incredibility.

It is not our purpose, however, either to affirm or dis-affirm the inspirational claims of the Bible Genesis. We simply take its language as we find it, stript of its Masoretic renderings and irrational interpretations, and unhesitatingly aver that the three Hebrew words, translated in our common version--"whose seed is in itself upon the earth" --contains, when properly rendered, the key that unlocks the whole "mystery of life," or, as Dr. Gull emphasizes it, "the grand questio vexata of the day." It expressly declares that "the primordial germs of all plant-life (and, inferentially of all life) are in themselves (i.e. each after its kind) upon the earth," and we have only to supplement this physiological statement with the "necessary incidence of conditions," as formulated by the physicists, to explain every phenomenal fact of life hitherto occurring upon our globe.

Take all the hints as to the spontaneous origin of life to be met with in Aristotle; all those subsequently repeated by Lucretius and Ovid; all the experiments of the renowned Abbé Spallanzani--all the alleged "fantastic assumptions" of M. Bonnet--all the theories of "panspermism," by whomsoever advocated--all the fortuitous aggregations of "molecules organiques," as put forth by the French school of materialists--all the primordia viventium of the gifted Harvey--all the "molecular machinery" and "undiscovered correlates of motion" formulated by Herbert Spencer and Professor Bastian--in fine, all the more brilliant theories of life ever spun from the recesses of the human brain,--and we shall find that they all fit into the three simple Hebrew words to be found in the Bible Genesis, and all are explained by them. We say all, with one exception only--that of man. And how inconceivably grand and majestic this exception! The crowning work of creation was MAN. He came from no "muddy vesture of decay;" no mere life-creating fiat spoke him into existence. He who was to have "dominion over all the earth"--who was to be created only a little lower than the angels--"in the image of God created He him." And, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, he became a living soul!

Here is the "bridge" over which the "evolutionist" may pass, if he will, without wearing either the dunce's cap or the ass's ears. It spans the chasm between the anthropoid ape and man as no other bridge can span it. Across this bridge is flung the living garment of God, and how grandly, yet reverently and humbly, did the profound Newton cross it! Oh, ye defiant iconoclasts of sublime faith in the "old doctrines;" ye who talk so flippantly of the "potentialities of life in a nebula;" who sit on the awe-inspiring Matterhorn, at high noon, and muse in sadness over "the primordial formless fog," teeming with all the mighty possibilities of myriads of sun-systems like our own; and, musing, sneer, if you can, at the idea of a "specific creation" in the beginning--of an Infinite Intelligence that directs and superintends all! Because you cannot annihilate matter, nor conceive of its annihilation in the infinitessimal compass of your brain, is that any reason why Infinite power and intelligence may not have spoken it into existence at His sovereign and commanding will? If man would presumptuously press towards the threshold of the Infinite, let him do it reverently, and with humility of spirit, and not as one "that vaunteth himself of strength," or "multiplieth words without knowledge."

But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction. It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."

What is here meant by "the spirit of God," is that life-giving breath or power of God which operates (continuously operates) to impart life to inanimate nature.[[6]] From the connection in which it here stands it means this, as in other connections it means the power which operates (continuously operates) to produce whatever is noble and good (God-like) in man. There is no implication in the text that this life-giving principle or power was suspended in the act of creation. On the contrary, there is abundant evidence in nature to show that it is just as operative now as it was in the beginning. One of the definitions given by Professor Gibbs of this spirit is, "that which operates throughout inanimate nature," not that which once operated, and then forever ceased its operations. And Professor Gibbs no doubt meant by "nature," in this connection, not only all the physical phenomena she presents, but the aggregate or sum total of all her phenomena, whether active or passive, animate or inanimate, embracing the world of matter or the world of mind.[[7]] "All are but parts of one stupendous whole,"--not a part nature, and a part not nature.

Again, in the eleventh verse, it is distinctly declared that the ZRA. the "germinal principle of life," is in the earth, producing each living thing, at least in the vegetable world, after its kind, that is, after its own class, order, genera, species. Hence, the three distinct and separate commands given to the earth, or to the earth and its waters, "to bring forth." No such command would have been given to the earth, had it not first received its baptism of life from God--in other words, derived the animating principle of life from the source of all Life.

And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he (or caused to be produced) every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both vegetal and animal life.

St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturæ non quseritur miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediæval authority. What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth," however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of our modern scientists.

And how completely does this genesis of life take man out of the definitional formula embracing the "beasts of the earth." From the lowest vertebrate, in Mr. Darwin's plexus, to the highest quadrumane (his nearest allied type to man), covering almost an infinite variety of distinct living forms, the distance to be traversed, in order to reach man, is hardly more than one-third the length of the still unlinked and uncompleted chain. In the average capacity of the monkey's brain-chamber, to say nothing of his other characteristic differences, the distance is not half traversed. As a "beast of the earth," he remains allied to his own type, and nothing higher. Both Darwin's vertebral plexus, and Herbert Spencer's "line of individuation," must begin with the lancelet and its disputed head, and end in the Catarrhine or Old World monkey. No a priori induction will ever extend this line or plexus to man. The developmental chain, if indeed there be one, has no congenital link that will either drag man down to the "beast of the earth," or lift the latter up to the transcendent plane of humanity. Each must remain specifically in his own type, whatever may be their vertical tendencies, upwards or downwards.[[8]] And this word "type" implies a fundamental ground-plan--an archetype--an original conception of what each should unconditionally be, and what plane each should as unconditionally occupy. Man's place in nature can never be changed or modified by materialistic speculations. Whatever theories the materialists may spin into the unsubstantial warp and woof of their scientific formulæ respecting life, will never stand before the tenacious and stubborn physiological facts which almost any thoroughly-informed and well-read scholar of nature may readily present against them.

Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him, this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the genetrix omnium viventium, or the living mother on whose bosom he shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious gramma coveted by his favorite game.

And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks. But how about the preëxisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature, did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one, and we will answer it.

But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes, modifications, combinations, etc.,[[9]] chemically as well as molecularly considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.

For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications, etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine conditions of matter, in the case of all animals (the mastodon included), as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life, must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary, cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity, or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging Intelligence" of the universe.

Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere (which is concessively possible), with the necessary environment (also concessively possible), then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion. All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus, or the first fungus-spore. [[10]]

All physicists, as well as physiologists, agree that individual species of both plants and animals have disappeared from the earth for the want of the "necessary conditions" under which they once lived and flourished. What greater fallacy is there, then, in the assumption that they originally appeared from the presence of these identical conditions, whatever they may have been, and whenever they may have occurred? We put this question not simply because the Bible Genesis asserts that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" every plant of the field "before it was in the earth," as well as every herb of the field "before it grew;" nor because it declares that their primordial germs are in the earth; nor because it speaks of the earth as containing within itself the "animating principle of life." But we put it on the irrefragable logic of the materialist's own premises and conclusions. They may use other and different physiological terms from what we should care to employ, but their "correlates of motion," their "molecular force," their "highly differentiated life-stuff," etc., may possibly mean nothing more than what we mean by "vital units," "vital forces," "vital conditions," etc. Their preference for the terms they employ, over essential "qualities" or "properties" of matter, is entirely due to the obvious invalidity of their conclusions, except as their physical theory of life may help them out of an unpleasant dilemma. "Force" is a more convenient term on which to allege the de novo origin of life--its spontaneous manifestation in their experimental flasks--than any vital principle primarily inhering in matter, and manifesting itself whenever conditions favor. It is to validate their own reasoning that they construct their fallacious force-premises, from which to draw their materialistic inductions. In other words, theirs is the fallacy of non causa pro causa, or that vicious process of reasoning which alleges some other than the real cause of vital manifestation, and fastens induction where none is legitimately inferable.

Burdach, Buffon, Pouchet, Needham, and other professed vitalists, agree that in all life-manifestations there must be some preëxisting vital force or principle, without which no living thing, whether plant or animal, can come into existence.[[11]] M. Pouchet says: "I have always thought that organized beings were animated by forces which are in no way reducible to physical or chemical forces." The Abbé Needham is satisfied to formulate a "force végetative," so far as plant-life is concerned; Buffon invariably falls back on vital force or energy; and Burdach on a "force plastique," which is essentially inseparable from nature in her vital manifestations. According to the latter, the whole universe is an "organisme absolu" constantly endowed with life, and giving expression to it in all conceivable directions. And all that these vitalists need, to give a full interpretation to their facts of observation, is to supplement their theories with the Bible declaration that the animating principle of life is in the earth, from which all living things make their appearance, each distinctively after its own kind, whenever environing conditions favor. For they severally recognize these "necessary conditions" as inseparable from all vital manifestation.

An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained (towards solving the problem of life) that all the more perfect organic beings, among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals (and at the head of the latter, man), to be formed according to an archetype, [[12]] which merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his "archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature adheres to perfected forms.

Goethe accepts the doctrine of vis centripeta, beyond the influence of which no developmental progress can be made in the way of diversifying or variegating ideal types. In other words, he virtually fixes limits to variability, from the outermost circumference of which reversion must inevitably take place. His whole doctrine may be summed up generally, if not specially, in these words: "The animal is fashioned by circumstances to circumstances," as the eagle to the air and mountain top, the mole to the loose soil in which it burrows, the seal to the water in which he frolics, and the bat to the cave, the twilight, and the night air. We should rather say that the animal is fashioned, after the Great Architect's pattern, to circumstances, and is only varied by circumstances, and that within the narrowest limits of variability. For the most that Goethe means by his "archetype" is an ideal pattern, after which, or on which, a natural group of plants or animals has been fashioned within the limits of possible variability. But by whose mind, or rather within whose mind, was this ideal pattern--this essential archetype--fashioned? Whence this ideal type, this natural group, this Archeus pervading all nature and fashioning all organic matter? Not from the mind of Goethe certainly, nor from that of Aristotle or Lucretius, but from the one supreme mind of the universe, in which the groups of all living things were originally fashioned in the archetypal world--that world "which," according to Bolingbroke, "contains intelligibly all that is contained sensibly in our world."

This archetypal doctrine of Goethe, coupled, as he couples it, with the influences of environment, or necessary external conditions, with typical modifications only, while it entirely harmonizes with the Bible genesis of types (everything modeled after its kind), is far from aiding, or in any way abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we attribute to nature a purpose to modify persistent forms under a law that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the type and determining the limits of its variability. The question is not, therefore, as many may seem to think, whether species originate by miracle or by law, but whether laws and causes can exist independently of any predetermining will or agency in the universe.

Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations, before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality, spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God, angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites, ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals, and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.

But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.

Chapter III.

Alternations of Forest Growths.

No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer. And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor any very important new facts given.

If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature, with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the 11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution, but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.

Professor George P. Marsh, in his work on "Man and Nature," in which he treats largely of forestry in Europe, says that "when a forest old enough to have witnessed the mysteries of the Druids is felled, trees of other species spring up in its place; and when they, in their turn, fall before the axe, sometimes even as soon as they have spread their protecting shade over the surface, the germs which their predecessors had shed, perhaps centuries before, sprout up, and in due time, if not choked by other trees belonging to a later stage in the order of natural succession, restore again the original wood. In these cases, the seeds of the new crop may have been brought by the wind, by birds, by quadrupeds, or by other causes; but, in many instances, this explanation is not probable." It is manifest that Professor Marsh uses the word "germs," in this connection, in the sense of seeds only; for no seed-bearing trees "shed" any other germs than the natural seeds they bear. And while he admits that, in many instances, the generally accepted theory concerning the dissemination of seeds is not a probable one, he still clings to the exploded notion that vegetable physiology furnishes a record of "numerous instances where seeds have grown after lying dormant for ages in the earth." He further says, in the same connection, that "their vitality seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them;" although he is reluctant to accept the accounts of "the growth of seeds which had lain for ages in the ashy dryness of the Egyptian catacombs," believing that they should be received with great caution, if not rejected altogether. But why he should scruple about receiving these speculative accounts of ancient Egyptian cereals, which are sometimes hawked about the country for two and three dollars a seed, and, in the same breath, accept the absurder theory that seeds may lie dormant for ages in soils where the hardest and most enduring woods will utterly perish and disappear in a few brief years, is wholly inexplicable to us, except as an hypothesis to force a conclusion, or to account for the otherwise unaccountable alternations of forest growths.

But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr. Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast into the fire and consumed to ashes.

But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up, in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer; and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation. But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years, is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.

It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter, while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the "germs" (not the natural seed) of the former. These changes in timber growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or "vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting "the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and implicitly followed since.

In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch, ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple, spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths, supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance and growth.

The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of 1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the immediate neighborhood (a fact not stated), it might have come from natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."

In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated that the path of this tornado (which must have occurred many years ago) "had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is, unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.

In many parts of the United States, particularly in the South and West, the paths of local tornadoes--those sweeping the native forests long before the axe of civilization invaded them--may still be traced by the alternations of timber growths, extending for long distances, and through forests where there were no neighboring trees from which it was possible that their seeds could have been derived. One of these tornadoes the writer traced many years ago (as early as 1837) in South Alabama, and he is satisfied, both from observation and reading, that the instances are rare, if not altogether exceptional, where the clean path of a tornado, through any of our primitive forests, has been succeeded by the same growth of timber as that borne down by the winds. Where the path of this ancient tornado of Alabama swept through a pine forest, a clean growth of oak was buttressed on either side by pine; and vice versa, where it swept an oak forest. And it is certain that the tornado, whenever it may have occurred, could have exhibited no such discriminating freak as alternately to distribute acorns in pine growths, and pine cones in oak growths, either to make good a scientific theory or balk an unscientific one.

Professor Agassiz, in passing through a dense young spruce forest some years ago, on the south shore of Lake Superior, noticed that the ground was thickly strewn with fallen birch trunks, showing that their place had been but recently usurped by the spruce; and he supposed that the birch had first succumbed to the force of the winds, and the spruce promptly taken its place, since, as a general rule, an evergreen growth succeeds a deciduous, and vice versa. We have any number of well authenticated facts similar to this stated by Professor Agassiz, but we cannot give place to them, in this connection, without greatly exceeding our limits.

Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack (Larix Americana) may be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by the balsam fir (Abies balsamea), which may be probably caused by the partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up in the interest of speculative parties.

But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone, nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees. Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the Bible genesis nowhere affirms.

Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts," suggests as a cause (undoubtedly the true one) for the dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the "seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth (with him) lies locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.

He says: "Nature points out in various ways, and the observation of practical men has almost uniformly confirmed the conclusion to which the philosophical botanist has come from theoretical considerations, that a rotation of crops is as important in the forests as in the cultivated fields." And he supplements this statement (measurably a true one) by adding that "a pine forest is often, without the agency of man, succeeded by an oak forest, where there were a few oaks previously scattered through the woods to furnish seed." This is a very cautious, as well as circumspect, statement; but one that Mr. Emerson would not have made, had his experience and observation been that of Professor Agassiz, Professor Marsh, and others we might name. His few oaks previously scattered through the woods are no doubt among the "theoretical considerations" taken into account by him, as a philosophical botanist rather than a practical one. They were necessary for the extreme caution with which he would state a proposition when its "conditioning facts" were not fully known by him. His anxiety to account for the appearance of an oak forest in the place of a pine, where the latter had been cut off, was commendable enough to justify him in a pretty broad supposition, but not in any such general statement as he here makes. Had he consulted any of the older inhabitants of Westford, Littleton, and adjoining towns, in his own state, he would have found that not a few oak forests had succeeded the pine without the intervention of "scattered oaks," or even scattered acorns, in the localities named. Nor would his "squirrel-theory" of distribution have been very confidently adhered to, fifty years ago, in localties where the shagbark walnut was almost as abundant as the white oak itself. No squirrel will gather acorns where he can possibly get hickory nuts, and few will gather hickory nuts where the larger and thinner-shelled walnuts are to be had for the picking. The squirrel is provident, but no more so than he is fastidious in the choice of his food. He never plants acorns except for his own gratification, and is never gratified with indifferent food so long as he can command that which is to his liking.

In further speaking of the "exhausted elements" of the soil--those necessary for the food of trees as well as plants, and without which they inevitably perish and disappear--Mr. Emerson says; "This is clearly indicated in what is constantly going on in the forests, particularly the fact which I have already stated, and which is abundantly confirmed by my correspondents, that a forest of one kind is frequently succeeded by a spontaneous growth of trees of another kind." In the sense in which he manifestly uses the term "spontaneous" in this connection, his new forest might be accounted for on the theory of "primordial germs," but not on that of "seeds;" for few trees or shrubs in Massachusetts bear winged seeds, or possess any other means of dispersion (the Acer family excepted) than those common to our general forest growths. Spontaneity, in a strictly scientific sense, is not predicable upon the artificial or chance sowing of either acorns, hickory nuts, or the chits to pine cones. A spontaneous growth implies a process which is neither usual nor accidental--a growth without external cause, but from inherent natural tendency--and it is questionable whether there is any such process in nature. It belongs to the same class of idle speculations as "spontaneous generation" in the infusorial world--a subject that will be considered as we advance in this work.

Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also mentioned by him (Mr. Sanderson) of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm, etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was expressed at the asking of the question."

These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis. They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not "spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any native forest from which seed could have been derived.

Dr. Dwight, in the second volume of his "Travels," mentions visiting a town in Vermont (Panton, near Vergennes), in which a piece of land that had been once cultivated, but was afterwards permitted to lie waste, "yielded a thick and vigorous growth of hickory, where there was not a single hickory tree in any original forest within fifty miles of the place." Of this piece of land he says: "The native growth here was white pine, of which I did not see a single stem in the whole grove of hickory." He is greatly puzzled to account for this isolated growth of hickory, but readily concludes that "the fruit was too heavy to be carried fifty miles by birds; besides" he adds, "it is not eaten by any bird indigenous to Vermont." And even if the birds had carried the nuts thither, not one of them could have been planted there unless the nut-eating bird had been caught and destroyed on the spot, and the nut released from its crop. This might account for the appearance of a single tree, but not for a "whole grove of hickory;" and the squirrels certainly could not have been provident enough to plant any considerable grove in this particular locality, and nowhere else within fifty miles of it. The winds could not have borne them that distance without dropping a single nut by the way, and there is only one supposition left, which is that indicated in the Bible genesis.

While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest, within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils, at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation; and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome were laid.

Dr. Dwight was a very close and accurate observer of nature, and suffered few of even the minor points of detail to escape him. In the same work, as well as in the same connection, he gives an account of another forest, which he supposes sprang spontaneously from "the seeds of an ancient vegetation." He says: "A field about five miles from Northampton (Mass.), on an eminence called 'Rail Hill,' was cultivated about a century ago (circiter 1720). The native growth here, and in all the surrounding region, was wholly oak, chestnut, etc. As the field belonged to my grandfather, I had the best opportunity of learning its history. It contained about five acres, in the form of an irregular parallelogram. As the savages rendered the cultivation dangerous, it was given up. On this ground there sprang up a grove of white pines, covering the field and retaining its figure exactly. So far as I remember, there was not in it a single oak or chestnut tree;" and he adds, "there was not a single pine whose seeds were, or, probably, had for ages been, sufficiently near to have been planted on this spot." He supposes, however, that the "seeds" (pine cone chits) had lain dormant for ages before cultivation brought them up "within the limits of vegetation."

As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany, and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at intervals among the larger deciduous trees.

Indeed, there is no better established fact in vegetable physiology than that of these alternations of forest growths. They sometimes come on gradually, but, in a majority of instances, they make their appearance at once on the cutting off of old forests, in the tracks of tornadoes, or where fire has devastated extensive regions of timber. From the facts which have been gathered, it is difficult to determine any regular order of alternation, except that oaks and other deciduous trees succeed the different varieties of pine and other evergreen growths, and, perhaps, vice versa. In Dr. Hough's report upon American Forestry, he makes a brief summary of the order of these alternations in different sections of the country, on the authority of persons apparently more or less well-informed on the subject, but by no means accurate observers. He says that in the region about Green Bay, Wis., overrun by the fires of 1871, "dense growths of poplars and birches have sprung up, and are growing rapidly;" but he omits the most important fact of all, in his failure to state the previous growths of timber, or whether there were any neighboring growths of poplar along the track of the burnt district from which seed might have been derived.

Here are some of his more important statements:--

"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."

"At Aiken, S.C., the long-leaf pine is succeeded by oaks and other deciduous trees, and vice versa."

"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off, oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."

"In Hancock County, Ill., oaks have been succeeded by hickories."

"In East Hamburgh, Erie County, N.Y., a growth of hemlock, elm, and soft maple, was succeeded by beech, soft maple, and hard maple, but a good deal more of the last named than any other."

This is the general character of the summary given, and if its object were simply to show the fact that these alternations actually took place (one that nobody has disputed in the last half century), his chapter on the "Alternations of Forest Growths," is a scientific success. The information really desired in these cases, was that imparted by Dr. Dwight in his suggestive work of travel, in which all the incidental facts and surrounding circumstances are fully given. It does not appear from any of the foregoing statements, given as a specimen, that there were any neighboring trees sufficiently near to have supplied seed for the new forests taking the place of the old,--manifestly the most important physiological fact connected with the whole inquiry, whether looking to proper forest-management, or to future "schools of forestry," certain to be established in this country, as they have been in most of the leading countries of Europe.

It is, however, stated by Dr. Hough, in his voluminous report, that, "in New England, the pine (without giving its varieties) is often succeeded by the white birch, and, in New Jersey, by the oak; the succession of oak by pine, and the reverse, in the southern states." And it is further stated, without reference to the nature and quality of the different soils, or the absence or presence of neighboring seed-trees, that "poplars and other soft woods are very often found coming up in pine districts that have been ravaged by fire." "We have noticed," he continues, "in Nebraska, ash, elm, and box-elder following cottonwood. In the natural starting of timber in the prairie region of Illinois, where the stopping of fires allowed, we often see a hazel coppice; after a time the cratægus, and finally the oaks, black-walnuts, and other timber. These growths are often quite aggressive on the prairies. In Florida, the black-jack oak usually takes the place of the long-leaf pine." In all these cases, the contiguousness of similar, or dissimilar growths, is not stated.

He nevertheless cites a most important fact respecting the alternations of timber growth, noticed by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, in his overland journey from Montreal to the Arctic Ocean, in 1789, who found, in the vicinity of Slave Lake, that the banks were covered with large quantities of burnt wood lying on the ground, where young poplar trees had sprung up immediately after the destruction of the previous growths by fire. In noticing this fact, the indefatigable English explorer remarks: "It is a very curious and extraordinary circumstance that land covered with spruce, pine, and white birch, when laid waste by fire, should subsequently produce nothing but poplars, where none of that species of tree was previously to be found". But facts of a similar character are too numerous and well-authenticated to be questioned by any intelligent authority. And they all point to but one solution--that of primordial germs quickened into life by the necessary environing conditions. The appearance of a single poplar in the locality named, or even a dozen of them for that matter, might be accounted for on the theory that a bird of passage had dropped them there after the fire; but, under no conceivable circumstances, could the dispersion of the requisite amount of seed to plant an extensive burnt district, along the banks of Slave Lake, have occurred on any other theory than that emphatically set forth, as a physiological fact, in the Bible genesis.

There is manifestly importance enough attaching to this subject to justify a much wider range of observation and inquiry than has yet been made. Pine forests have been cut off in Alabama and Georgia, covering extensive areas, where there was not a single oak tree in a circuit of miles; and yet the oak has promptly made its appearance, in several varieties, over the whole cleared district. And it is entirely safe to say that, had the ground been thoroughly examined, from the surface to ten feet below it, after the pine had been felled, not the first sign of an acorn could have been met with anywhere within the whole area of the clearing, no matter whether it covered ten acres, twenty, or a hundred. The paths of the tornadoes we have referred to conclusively show this. The new-born forests, in these cases, do not come from seed, but from the living, indestructible, vital principles implanted in the earth, before it was specifically commanded to "bring forth," in the language of the Bible genesis. The "materialists," like Professor Bastian, Herbert Spencer, and others, may sneer at this declaration, but let them advance some rational theory to the contrary, to account for these alternations of forest growths, before they lay bare the joints of their scientific armor too confidently to the thrusts of the next new-comer in the field of scientific investigation. Sneers are cheap weapons--the mere side-arms of pretension and frippery--but they never bear so deadly a gibe as when effectually turned on the sneerer.

Professor Moritz Wagner, in his description of Mount Ararat, mentions "a singular phenomenon," to which his guide drew his attention, "in the appearance of several plants on soil lately thrown up by an earthquake, which grew nowhere else on the mountain, and had never been observed in this (that) region before." This writer, thereupon, goes into a disquisition upon the vitality of long-buried seeds, but only to mar the value of his very important observation. The fact that these new plants were rejected by the other soil of the mountain--that not thrown up by the earthquake--is the only other observation of value made by this writer. And the importance of this one observation lies in the apparent, if not conclusive fact, that the conditions of the other soil of the mountain were not favorable for the development of the primordial germs, or vital units, contained in that which was thrown up by the earthquake, a circumstance that most materially strengthens the view we have taken, as all candid and impartial readers will agree.

Mr. Darwin inadvertently makes a very material concession in favor of the theory we have advanced, although unconscious of any such theory, except that so broadly and unqualifiedly put forth by the "panspermists" as to meet with a ready refutation. He is laboring, of course, to strengthen his position that nature eternally works to get rid of her imperfect forms, or to ensure "the survival of the fittest." But while his facts accomplish little in this direction, they establish much in another, as the reader will see. He says: "In Staffordshire, on an estate of a relative, where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years before, and planted with scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable--more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, but twelve species of plants (not including grasses and sedges) flourished in the plantation which could not be found on the heath." The attempt is here made, by Mr. Darwin, to convey an altogether different meaning to his facts than what they will warrant, even as adroitly handled by him. No heath plants were "wholly changed" in characteristics, but only in proportional numbers; nor did the "twelve new species of plants" make their appearance by virtue of any law of variability or selection of the fittest. The growth of scotch fir had simply changed the conditions of the soil, so that certain varieties of heath growth disappeared for the want of "necessary conditions," and certain varieties of forest growth made their appearance because conditions favored. Similar, if not greater changes, are constantly occurring in hundreds of localities in New England, where choked and worn-out pasture lands are left, untouched by the hand of man, to grow up as best they may into new forests. The open-field plants and shrubs entirely disappear, as the stronger and more aggressive trees, taking root in favoring soils, advance in the struggle for supremacy, while the less hardy and more modest plants--those quietly seeking shelter in the woods--make their appearance, because they find, beneath the shade of the usurping forest, the precise conditions necessary for their more successful growth.

No perishable seeds have been awakened from their "sleep of untold centuries" by these changed conditions of the soil; but nature, everywhere obeying the divine mandate, brings forth her implanted life in all its bountiful diversity of stalk, leaf, bud, bough, blossom, fruit,--not in obedience to man's husbandry alone, but because, as the "vicar of God," she must provide for her benefice. "Let the earth bring forth" is the eternal fiat. Nature forever heeds it, and forever obeys it. "Oh, ye blind guides, who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, doubt it if ye will." But forget not that nature has her "compunctious visitings," and will rise up in insurrection against you. Nothing in her breast lies dormant for ages, or even for an hour. Her appointed times and seasons forbid it. If the butterfly does not sport in her sunshine to-day, it is because it lies dead in its golden-colored shroud, and can never become a butterfly. In all her profusion and prodigality--flinging her glittering jewels, even in mid-winter, over all her enamored woods, and causing her little fountains to leap up from their crystal beds in delight, that they may be frozen, mid-air, into more sparkling jets--she exhibits no such munificence as in her unsparing prodigality of life. To be prodigal in this was the first command she received, and her great heart constantly throbs to give it expression. And in all this she simply obeys a kindly law which has been implanted in her bosom, and can never be displanted. She has no need of seeds in her cunning laboratory to perpetuate plant-life, and only yields them to man for use, and not abuse. He can utilize them if he will, so that all things of beauty and golden-fruited promise shall be his. In the language of her greatest and most profoundly philosophical poet,--

"Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor--
Both thanks and use."

Those who think, therefore, to make nature a debtor, by reversing her laws of propagation and making her dependent on what she bestows in use, will never find out the smallest scruple of her excellence, nor add to her glory as a creditor. All things are framed in her prodigality, and the seeds of plants and trees are no exception to the quality of her bestowals. We may reason, syllogize, speculate as we will, the first plant and the first tree were not nature's thankless bastards, but her legitimate and loving offspring. She engendered them in her own fruitful breast, and her "copy is eterne."

Chapter IV.

The Distribution and Vitality of Seeds.

Few questions have attracted more attention among vegetable physiologists, of late years, than the dispersion and migration of seeds from place to place in the earth, and it is safe to say that none has been more unsatisfactorily answered. In the case of quite a number of plants and trees, special contrivances would seem to have been provided by nature for insuring their dispersion, as well as migration. With a small number of plants, for instance, the seeds are discharged for short distances by the explosive force of their seed-vessels, when properly matured; an equally small number have certain membranous contrivances, called "wings," by which they may be borne still greater distances; others, again, are provided with light feathery tufts, to which the seed is attached, and these may be carried by the winds several miles before finding a lodgment in the soil; while many others are inclosed in prickly and barb-pointed coverings by which they attach themselves to animals, and even birds, and may be transported to almost any distance. But with the great majority of plants and trees, as the seeds fall so they lie, and must continue to lie until they either germinate or perish, or are accidentally dispersed or scattered by some extrinsic agency. The anxiety of speculative botanists to account for the recognized alternations of forest and other growths, have led to the different theories of transportation we have named; and when these theories have been supplemented by the alleged wonderful vitality of seeds, in the cunning recesses in which nature manages to conceal them, they imagine the whole difficulty solved, when, in point of fact, it remains wholly unsolved.

This theory of the "wonderful vitality" of seeds is simply one, as we have said, to force a conclusion--to get rid of a lion in the scientific path. Professor Marsh, with other eminent and scholarly writers on vegetable physiology, scouts the idea that the seeds of some of our cereal crops have been preserved for three or four thousand years in the "ashy dryness" of the Egyptian catacombs. But what better repository in which to preserve them? Certainly, none of our modern granaries, with all their machinery for keeping the grain dry, or from over-heating. Nor are the catacombs to be despised, as compared with any out-door means of storage yet suggested by the wit of man. The only means nature has of storage, or rather of preservation by storage, is to welcome the seed back to her bosom--the earth from which its parent-seed sprang--where it may be speedily quickened into life, and bear "other grain," not itself. For "that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die;" and much more is that dead which is not quickened. Whenever seed is thus returned to nature's bosom--all-palpitating as it is with life--whether it quickens or not, it dies; and there is no resurrection for dead seed from the earth, any more than there is for the occupants of the exhumed mummy-cases of ancient Thebes.

The belief in this wonderful vitality of seeds, in the positions in which nature deposits them, is pretty much on a par with that which assigns a thousand years to the life of a crow. As nobody but the scholastic fool in the fable has ever attempted to verify the correctness of this latter belief, so it is safe to assume that the experiment of verifying the former will not be successfully undertaken within the next thousand years, to say the least. It is well known that the vitality of seeds (so far, at least, as nature handles them) depends, upon her cunning contrivances for their preservation, as well as their dispersion. But many seeds, in which these contrivances would seem to be the most perfect, will not germinate after the second year, and few will do so to advantage after the third or fourth year, even when they have been kept under the most favorable circumstances, or in uniform dryness and temperature. Farmers, who have had practical experience in this matter, and care little for what is merely theoretical, will never plant seed that is three or four years old when they can get that of the previous year's growth. It is certain that no hickory nut will retain its vitality beyond the first year of its exposure to a New England soil and climate, and few seeds are better protected by nature against such exposure; and it is equally questionable whether the chits to Dr. Dwight's pine cones would have had any better chance of survival at the time the Indians infested the neighborhood of Northampton, and regularly fired the woods every autumn.

Although Professor Marsh confidently says, in his work on. "Man and Nature," that "the vitality of seeds seems almost imperishable while they remain in the situations in which nature deposits them," he will no doubt admit that this statement rests on no experimental knowledge, but simply on the hypothesis that the new forests and new species of plants to which he refers, originated from seeds, and not from primordial germs everywhere implanted in the earth. Dr. G. Chaplin Child, who swallows the "Egyptian wheat" story, mummy-cases and all, in speaking of some of the English "dykes" or mound-fences which have existed from time well-nigh immemorial, says: "No sooner are these dykes leveled than the seeds of wild flowers, which must have lain in them for ages, sprout forth vigorously, just as if the ground had been recently sown with seed." He also mentions, as a more or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they may have been, are no more conclusive of the presence of dormant seed, than the appearance of the common plantain about a recently built dwelling-house, where none ever grew before, is proof that the seeds of this common household plant had lain dormant for ages before the house was erected. We cannot tell why this common plant follows the domestic household, any more than we can tell why rats follow civilization. But they are both sufficiently annoying at times, to satisfy us that they do follow, however inexplicable the reason may be.

The same writer further says, in connection with the foregoing statements: "Instances (of the vitality of seeds) might easily be multiplied almost indefinitely, but we shall be satisfied with noticing one of a very extraordinary kind. In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, a man died soon after he had eaten plentifully of raspberries. He was buried at Dorchester. About twenty-eight years ago, the remains of this man, together with coins of the Roman Emperor, were discovered in a coffin (!) at the bottom of a barrow, thirty feet under the surface. The man had thus lain undisturbed for some 1700 years. But the most curious circumstance connected with the case was, that the raspberry seeds were recovered from the stomach (!) and sown in the garden of the Horticultural Society, where they germinated and grew into healthy bushes," Here is circumstantiality enough to satisfy the most unlimited skepticism, provided that the facts were satisfactorily vouched for by the living, and the record left by the dead were sufficiently explicit in detail, and conclusive in identity of subject. Then to suggest even a reasonable doubt would, we admit, be equivalent to making truth a circumstantial liar.

But this most remarkable story will bear repetition, with a few running comments. "The man (presumably a Roman soldier) died seventeen hundred years ago." This is not unlikely. "He died of eating too plentifully of raspberries;" a circumstance not altogether improbable. "He was buried at Dorchester;" where, of course, there were no records of deaths and burials kept at the time, and hence, we should have to question the record, if one were presented. "He was also buried in a coffin, or, at least, dug up in one." This statement must be received cum grano. The Romans never used coffins, and, under the empire, they burnt most of their dead. After a battle, however, they generally piled them up in heaps, and, where there was a lack of fuel to burn them, they covered them with the surface soil, taking good care to put a Roman coin in each soldier's mouth, so that he might pay the ferryman in Hades. "There was thirty-five feet of surface soil shoveled on top of this particular Roman,"--showing that he was a very consequential personage in camp. No wonder, then, that all these nice particularities of statement should have been circumstantially noted in the commanding general's "order of the day," and thus been handed down to posterity for the future advancement of science! "He had lain undisturbed for nearly two thousand years." Almost any one would have done so, with that amount of surface soil shoveled on top of him. "The seeds were recovered from his stomach;" that is, after improvidently snatching away the Roman soldier's life, they took good care to preserve their own, as well as the stomach in which they were deposited. "The seeds were planted in the Horticultural Society's garden, where they flourished vigorously."

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.

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.

The process of artificially producing mushroom spores is a very simple one, and may be easily followed. You have only to collect a quantity of horse-droppings, mingle with them some common road sand, place them under cover, see that they are well beaten down in order to prevent over-heating--turning them occasionally for the same purpose--and in due time they will generate sufficient spores for a dozen mushroom beds of the ordinary size. The reason for their appearance is the same as that governing truffle spores--they come whenever conditions favor, that is, whenever the soil is chemically balanced for their development and growth. In other words, they come because it is just as impossible for them not to come, in their proper environing conditions, as it is for the earth, in its present cosmical relations, not to respond to its axial rotation. "Let the earth bring forth" is just as much an outspoken law of nature, and one as inexorably obeyed, as that unerring force of gravity which led Leverrier, in the faith of his inductions, to indicate the precise point in the heavens where the far-off planet, now bearing his name, might be seen by the required telescope.

Dr. Cooke, quoting Mr. Cuthill's directions for producing mushroom spores, says: "These little collections of horse-droppings and road sand, if kept dry in shed, hole, or corner, under cover, will, in a short time, generate plenty of spawn, and will be ready to spread on the surface of the bed in early autumn." The collections should, of course, be made in the early summer. But it is no part of our object to indicate, in this connection, the process of truffle or mushroom culture. We merely refer to the methods to show that the vital units, or germinal principles of life, in the case of fungi, are just as dependent on "conditions" for their development, as were the primordial germs of the gigantic cryptogams of the carboniferous era. These primordial germs, or the ZRA of the Bible genesis, must have preceded the first fungous growth, as they preceded the first spore-bearing cryptogam.

M. Gasparin, in his report on the production of truffles, made to the great "Paris Exposition" of 1855, refers to the "natural truffle-grounds at Vaucluse," where the "common oak produces truffles like the evergreen oak;" although, in other localities, owing no doubt to the different conditions of the soil, those gathered at the base of the one species of oak differ very materially from those gathered at the base of the other. All these experimental results, and many others we might give in connection with the culture of edible fungi, point to the conditions of the soil, produced by natural rather than artificial means, as all-essential for the propagation of fungus spores, as well as their development into full-sized plants. The cultivation of other and minuter fungi, for scientific purposes, need not be referred to in this connection. The same general observations will be found to apply in the case of all the experiments tried, although some very curious and remarkable modifications occur where pseudospores are to be found in the micelium of different plants. Nearly all these fungi have their own parasites, originating undoubtedly in the diseased conditions of the plant from which they derive their nutriment. Indeed, all fungi, whether parasitic or non-parasitic, have their origin, more or less definitely occurring, in decay. It is no more true that death is a necessity of life, than that life is an equal necessity of death. As out of the dead past springs the eternally living present, so from the "muddy vesture of decay" spring all the marvellous powers of reproduction with which nature was endowed from the beginning.

But it is unnecessary to dwell longer on the spores of fungi. As with the seeds of plants and trees, these spores never had an existence, and never could have had one, before the first independent fungus appeared to produce them. The fungus before the spore is the inevitable induction. No distinction between necessary and contingent truth can ever take a stronger hold than this on the human mind. Whence, then, the first fungus? or whence, rather, all those colonies, families, orders, divisions, and countless distinct individuals, extant everywhere, in the mycological world? The answer we shall give will be anticipated from what we have already so confidently affirmed. Life comes from Life, as spirit comes from God. And when "the spirit of God" moved upon the face of the depths--upon the face of all the earth--at whatever stage in the progress of our planet, from its original form to its present myriad-thronged condition of life, that transcendent event occurred, Nature, as we half-idolatrously worship her, received her first baptism of life, and her solemn consecration as "the vicar of God." No wonder, then, that at that ecstatic moment, when the ineffably bright mantle, fringed with "the white radiance of eternity," fell upon her, "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." And nature has been true to both her baptism and her consecration. She claims no worship, no adoration, no idolatrous homage from man, but continually sends up her eternal chant and choral anthem of praise to the great Giver of life. Every flower of the field, every blade of grass, every stream that mirrors the heavens above her, every mountain top from which she points an index finger, every breeze in which she whispers, and every cataract in which she speaks, all proclaim the power, the wisdom, the goodness of God--the source of all life in the universe, from the minutest spore to all-inventive, soul-endowed man.

Chapter V.

Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods.

Among the leading propositions laid down by Arthur Renfrey, Esq., F.R.S. etc., etc., in the able article prepared by him for "The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena," by Alexander Keith Johnston, Edinburg Edition, 1856, on "The Geographical Distribution of the most Important Plants Yielding Food," are the following:--

1. "The primary condition of the existence of any species of plant, is its absolute creation, of which we know nothing.

2. "But we assume each species to have been created but once in time and in place, and that its present diffusion is the result of its own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws external to it.[[14]]

3. "The most important of external laws are those relating to climate, since any species can flourish only within narrower or wider, but always fixed limits, of temperature, humidity etc.,

4. "The climate depends primarily on latitude, since this indicates distance from the source of heat, and the degree of obliquity of the heating rays."

There are other governing conditions, of course, such as the average rain-fall, distance from the equator, the elevation above the sea level in the various mountain systems of vegetation, etc., including the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions, of the several localities in which the different species of vegetation make their appearance.

But why should this distinguished naturalist insist upon the specific creation of either plants or animals? No scientific work of any paramount value confines the creative power of the universe to such narrow and restricted limits. Nor is there a particle of evidence to be drawn from the Bible that either plants or animals primarily originated in pairs. "Let the earth bring forth" is a command without limitation, or restriction, as to time, place, or number; and there is no reason to doubt that myriads of living forms swarmed everywhere, at first as now, in nature.

The idea, as expressed by Mr. Renfrey, that they were specifically created at one time and place only, whether in pairs, tens, twenties, or hundreds, is neither a rational one, nor has it any experience-argument or scientific authority on which to stand. Take, for instance, an experience-argument directly in point:--When the salt wells were first bored at Syracuse, N.Y., and the salt water was suffered to flow in waste over the low grounds about the salt-works, the small saline plants peculiar to salt-marshes in the warm temperate zone made their appearance, not in pairs, tens or hundreds, but in thousands rather, and have nourished there ever since. They came because conditions favored; because a salt-marsh had been artificially produced hundreds of miles away from the sea coast. This is only one of a large number of cases--more than we have room to specify in this connection--showing that wherever man, artificially or otherwise, produces the necessary conditions of plant-life, nature responds to the germinal law precisely as she did millions of years ago when the first salt-marsh favored the appearance of these saline plants--such as grow under no other conditions or circumstances.

But this idea of plants coming primarily from a single pair of progenitors, and each primordial pair branching off into diversified offspring, as in the case of the cabbage, assumed to be the original ancestor of all the turnips and ruta-bagas, may be an article of botanical faith, but never of experimental proof. "Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem" is an old and well-approved maxim, applicable alike to the countless myriads of living organisms, as to the innumerable crystalline forms to be found everywhere in nature. Nothing is produced without the necessary conditions on which its production depends. "Necessity," in its primitive signification, is a term of the very widest meaning, and most universal application. It applies as well to the course of nature as to the course of human events--to the laws of vegetable and animal growth as to the inevitable march and order of celestial movements. As applied to any form of life-manifestation it implies a law of development and growth, as well as the physiological conditions without which vital manifestations are impossible. For law, in a physiological sense, is that mode of vital action by which effects are invariably and inevitably produced.[[15]] And this law is just as dependent on necessary vital conditions as vital manifestations are dependent on a physiological law. There must always be this reciprocal dependence and relationship between conditioning causes and effects. Whenever and wherever the necessary vital conditions exist, the physiological law takes effect, and the requisite vital manifestation is witnessed. And this is no doubt as true of animal as of vegetable life.

The earth's surface has been divided into eight separate zones, each of which is distinguished by its peculiar or characteristic fauna and flora. Their order, measured from the geographical equator, is as follows;

1. The Equatorial Zone, extending from 0° to 15°.
2. " Tropical " " " 15° " 23°.
3. " Sub-tropical " " " 23° " 34°.
4. " Warm Temperate " " " 34° " 45°.
5. " Cold " " " 45° " 58°.
6. " Sub-arctic " " " 58° " 66°.
7. " Arctic " " " 66° " 72°.
8. " Polar " " " 72° " 82°.

These several zones become sixteen in number when considered with reference to both the northern and southern hemispheres. And a like division of isothermals is made in the case of all our mountain systems, extending in both directions from the equator. In ascending our equatorial, tropical, and sub-tropical mountains, we find, of course, at their several bases, the temperature of the zones in which they respectively lie; from two thousand to three thousand feet, we reach the next higher zone, and so on, at about the same ratio of altitude, until we ascend to the polar zone or the line of perpetual ice and snow. The peak of Teneriffe, for instance, lies in the sub-tropical zone, but, at the elevation named, we meet with the vegetation which characterizes the warm temperate zone. And this holds true of all our mountain systems, in all latitudes, and at all altitudes, in all parts of the globe.

They all present the same or strikingly similar characteristics in plant life, with such variations and modifications only as might be accounted for, were all the influencing conditions and surrounding circumstances, modifying geographical distribution, known to us. From the lowest to the highest regions in which vegetation flourishes, this rule, with slight exceptions only, will be found to obtain, and it is in this direction that the observations of the scientific, as well as practical botanist, should hereafter be extended.

Humboldt noticed this characteristic feature of the earth's vegetation quite early in his explorations, and accordingly divided the tropical mountains, as the earth's surface was then divided, into three separate zones, the tropical, the temperate, and the frigid. But a closer classification now distinguishes them into the same number of zones as are marked, in approximate isotherms, on the earth's surface. Mr. Renfrey gives us further statistics of great value respecting these several plant zones of the globe, all of which fit so admirably into our theory of plant-distribution, that we can hardly see how the most prejudiced mind can resist the force of its application. Among the most important of these statistical facts are tables giving the comparative rain-falls in the different plant zones of the old and new worlds, and the classes of vegetation peculiar to each of them.

The Equatorial zone, for instance, is characterized by extreme luxuriance in growth, owing no doubt to the great heat and abundant moisture therein, and exhibits a vegetation which is peculiar to itself, and which could only thrive under the hygrometric, thermometric, telluric, and other conditions of that extensive zone.

The Tropical zones (those north and south of the equator) are characterized by a more abundant and diversified underwood, and, while retaining some of the equatorial forms, present fewer parasites and less rapid and luxuriant growths. They contain many plants and trees which are peculiar to their own limits, and these are generally the hardiest and most abundant. All equatorial forms disappear in these zones, that is do not pass into the sub-tropical zones. And these characteristics obtain in both the northern and southern tropical zones, as well as in the mountain systems within the equatorial regions.

The Sub-tropical zones, while retaining some of the more marked forms and general features of the tropical zones, such as palms, bananas, etc., exhibit the most striking characteristics of their own, consisting of a greater abundance of forest trees, especially those having broad, leathery and shining leaves, like the magnolias, the different species of laurels, and plants of the myrtle family. The tropical forms all disappear in these zones, as the equatorial do in the tropical zones.

The Warm Temperate zones exhibit the same disposition to retain some of the hardier and more abundant sub-tropical forms that characterize the other zones, in respect to their adjoining isotherms. But the trees and plants peculiar to this zone north, (and the same is no doubt true of the corresponding zone south), are more numerous, and embrace a wider range of deciduous, as well as evergreen growths. Evergreen shrubs, heaths, cistusses, and leguminous plants are everywhere more abundant. The marked characteristic of these zones is that the trees, plants, and arborescent grasses differ more widely in their general character, as well as run more extensively into varieties.

The Cold Temperate zones retain many of the deciduous trees of the warm temperate, but with less conspicuous blossoms, while a stronger tendency is shown toward social conifers, and the trunks of the deciduous trees are more profusely overrun with mosses, lichens, etc. These zones are also abundant in grasses.

The Sub-arctic zone north largely retains its hold upon the social conifers, giving place, northward, on this continent, as well as in Europe and Asia, to birch and alder, alternating with willows where the soil is sufficiently moist. Green pastures are still abundant, and showy flowering herbs abound during the brief spring, summer, and autumn months.

The Arctic zone retains few of the sub-arctic forms and its vegetation generally corresponds to what we call alpine shrubs, grasses, etc.

The North Polar zone shows few signs of vegetation and is thought to be entirely devoid of shrubs. A few small herbacious perennials of the most extreme dwarf habit, with a few lichens and mosses, constitute its entire vegetation.

There are some seeming exceptions to these general statements respecting plant-distribution, but they are hardly exceptions when we consider the elevation at which any one species, as the birches for instance, may appear, as they frequently do, in three several zones.

From these facts, gathered from the highest authorities, and well-attested on all hands, what general conclusions, if any, are to be drawn? Before answering this inquiry, let us proceed to state what conclusions have been drawn. According to all the authorities we have examined on the distribution of plant life; on the migration of plants and animals; on climate and time as affecting the transference of isothermal and isochimenal lines; on glacial and inter-glacial periods (with one important exception only), the assumption maintained is substantially that of Mr. Renfrey, that "each species of plant and animal was created but once in time and place," and that its present diffusion is the result of its "own law of reproduction under the favorable or restrictive influences of laws external to it." In other words, they insist upon original plant-centres, without definitely stating when or where they occurred, and that from these centres both plants and animals have migrated to all parts of the globe where they now appear, even crossing the equatorial zones where they could not live for a single day. This migration theory they attempt to explain in a way that is altogether more ingenious than satisfactory.

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.

But first let us lay down a few undeniable propositions, on the strength of which this ingenious and purely speculative theory of Mr. Darwin must rest:--

1. It is universally conceded by the scientific world that these glacial epochs, however many of them there may have been in the past and however few there may be in the future, depend, for their occurrence, upon the maxima of eccentricity in the earth's orbit about the sun.

2. The actual amount of heat which the earth annually receives from the sun is in no way affected by the eccentricity of its orbit. It is a constant quantity, and only unequally distributed on the earth's surface, being neither increased nor diminished, as our winters occur in aphelion or perihelion.

3. The actual amount of ice-cap accumulated about the two poles of the earth, is also a constant quantity. And to measure the severity of any glacial epoch, we have only to determine the exact amount of ice (not altogether an impossible problem) about the two poles at any given time, and then determine the effect of its entire transference from one pole to the other.

4. It is not probable that the present ice-cap of the south pole extends continuously and permanently much farther north than 80° or 81°. Mt. Erebus, in Victoria Land, lies in about this latitude, and it was only a few years since that the coast line of that island or continent was traversed, by English exploring vessels, from Mt. Erebus to a point some ten or twelve degrees further north. [[18]]

5. But if we estimate the southern cap as extending continuously to 75°, what would be the effect of its transference at once to the ice-cap of the north pole? Would it extend it, after assuming its proper glacial slope, below 60°, a point falling within the present subarctic zone? The utmost limit to which Mr. Croll, in his great work on "Climate and Time," conceives it possible that it should extend, in any glacial epoch, is to 55°, or about the northern boundary of England.

Now unless the astronomers and physicists are all at sea about the causes of glaciation, the warm temperate zone can never be pushed any further south than the tropical zone, nor the cold temperate any further than the sub-tropical. This would be the extreme limit. Mr. Croll says, in speaking of these glacial periods; "It is, of course, absurd to suppose that an ice-cap could ever actually reach down to the equator. It is probable that the last great ice-cap of the glacial epoch nowhere reached half way to the equator. Our cap (that of Europe) must therefore, terminate at a moderately high latitude." And if the gulf stream flows southward during the glacial period north, as he supposes probable, the cap on this continent would probably terminate at the same moderately high latitude. Assuming that Mr. Croll's estimate is the more probable one, it would only push the cold temperate zone down to the line of the Gulf States; the warm temperate, to the southern line of Mexico; the sub-tropical, to the Central American States, and the tropical to the United States of Columbia, Venezuela, and Guiana.

Suppose, then, that some seven hundred thousand years ago, more or less, when the North Pole had fully donned the earth's ice-cap, with all the isothermal and isochimenal changes thereby effected, what must have been the line of march taken by our northern vegetal and animal forms to escape the cataclysm of ice and snow then impending? Manifestly, they would have flocked, first to the Gulf states, then to Mexico, and afterwards to the Central American states; but none of them could ever have been crowded through the Isthmus of Panama, since at the height of the last glaciation, that portion of the continent must have been the tropical barrier to our northern forms, as it is now the equatorial barrier.

For the sake of the argument, however, we will suppose the northern ice-cap to have been even more imperative in its demands than Mr. Croll has deemed possible, driving some of our warm and cold temperate forms down into the lowlands of Columbia, Venezuela, etc., in the extreme northern portions of South America. But how would these forms have managed, even then, to cross the thermal equator and secure a permanent habitat in the present warm and cold temperate zones of that continent? Manifestly, this question has never been practically solved, nor is it ever likely to be in our day or generation. It is nevertheless susceptible of solution, as Mr. Darwin thinks, by easy mental processes. We have only to take a bird's eye view of the situation, and mentally follow these forms in their long geographical tramp from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

They must have started, of course, some twenty thousand years or more before the earth reached its last superior limit of eccentricity. At that distant epoch the sub-arctic breezes must have been blowing pretty stiffly in our present temperate latitudes, and these forms would have been constrained, in due time, to seek a more congenial isotherm. They must accordingly have set out on their expedition, at about the period indicated, with the prospect of a long and tedious journey before them. Some twenty thousand years must have transpired before they reached the line of the present Gulf states, and it would have taken as many more years for them to deploy to the right and successfully enter the Mexican states. In another twenty thousand years or so they might have doubled Vera Cruz, and headed, in a southeasterly direction, for the Central American states. The thermal equator would by this time have reached a point some thirty degrees south of the geographical equator, while the northern ice-cap would have swept down upon the traditional "hub of the universe," or some ten or twelve degrees in excess of Mr. Croll's calculations.