of originality in their conception of the origin of life, as distinct from its development.

The most recent discovery has been made by M. Tremaux; but, as usual with these philosophers, it conflicts seriously with the theories of his predecessors in that field. M. Tremaux makes men and beasts a crop; but he derives the character of the crop, not from the seed, according to our usual ideas, but from the soil. It is the soil which determines whether we shall see wheat, or corn, or oats, or birds, or fishes, or men. Mother Earth, according to him, and not the sea, as Mr. Darwin puts it, is the mother of all life. The grand and simple basis of his system may be stated as exactly the reverse of the Bible statement, that “God made man out of the dust of the ground." He alleges that the dust of the ground made man out of itself, and all other beasts also. The differences in the crops he deduces from the differences in the soil,-the recent geological formations, compounded of a great variety of materials, produce higher grades of life; those of the primitive formations tend to degradation. In short, man and animals are crops depending principally on the richness of their native dunghills for their materials, somewhat on the climate, and being modified by the effect of frequent crossings, and a change of alimentary productions, which takes place in a sensible degree between neighboring countries. The wellknown characteristic differences of the races all lie in the soil and kitchen. The difference between the Englishman and the Irishman is chiefly the result of the difference between the bread and beef and ale, and the potatoes and buttermilk and whiskey, which respectively edify the solid Saxon or the fervid Celt. Put John on a potato diet, and keep him long enough on it, and he becomes Paddy.

We have thus, it seems, got around again to the old

heathen doctrine taught by Lucretius, whom some of our evolutionists are proud to praise as their predecessor. Our classical readers will remember his well-known lines beginning―

"Linguitur, ut merito, maternum nomen adepta;"

which Mr. Munro translates: "With good reason the earth has gotten the name of mother, since all things are produced out of the earth. And many living creatures, even now, spring out of the earth, taking form by the rains, and the heat of the sun.

Professor Carl Vogt, of Geneva, meets a difficulty of the Lucretian theory thus: "If it be difficult to conceive how the great diversities of organic types could have been developed from a common soil, it can, on the other hand, not be denied that an intrinsic difference in the constitution of this soil may have given rise to the diversity of types springing from it." That is, the mud made a crop of eels, the sand-hills produced rabbits, the Athenians sprung from their own soil, and Geneva grows evolutionists, as its autochthones or native stock.

And so it seems that this vaunted latest discovery of modern materialistic science is only the old putrid heathenism of Greece and India and China. It is as fresh as the mummy of Sesostris.

And it comes to us tried and found poisonous by these nations. By its fruits we shall know it. We can have no difficulty in seeing its fruits. Its record is against it. It carries the yellow flag. Chinese leprosy is on board. It sunk heathen Rome into vice and weakness and decay. It has reduced Burmah and China to their present stupid degradation. Let those who admire Chinese civilization adopt its philosophy. For the faith is the soul of the civilization. But we reject with disgust this rotten *De Rerum Natura, Lib. v. pp. 793-796.

Lectures on Man, p. 446.

heathen materialism, and believe in Almighty God as the Lord and Giver of Life.

2. This old Superstition, of Mother Earth Originating all Plants and Animals by her own Natural Powers, is Contrary to all the Facts of Experience and Observation. It was the natural product of ages of ignorance. Men saw the earth in spring putting forth innumerable buds, and spires of grass, and blossoming plants, and why not also animals and men? The untaught negroes of the South readily became evolutionists. When, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Miss Ophelia begins to teach Topsy her catechism, by asking, "Who made you?" Topsy readily answers, "Spect I nebber was made; jest growed." Topsy is in the evolution stage of education. But as Topsy extends her range of observations, she discovers that things generally grow from seeds. The class of selforiginated things diminishes upon closer observation. It was once generally believed that the carcass of Samson's lion bred the bees found there a year after his death; but closer research showed that they had only hived in it. It was not doubted for centuries that butchers' meat bred the maggots sometimes found in it, and that other creeping things were thus brought forth. Lucretius says, "Living creatures even now spring out of the earth, taking form by the rains and the heat of the sun."

It was not till the seventeenth century that Francesco Redi began to doubt this first principle of evolution. He saw the flies swarming about the butcher's shops, and suspected that they laid eggs, like bees, and that they deposited their eggs in the meat, and that the maggots were hatched from the eggs of the flies. To test this, he put some meat in jars and tied fine gauze over their mouths. The flies swarmed about the jars, and laid their eggs or living offspring on the gauze, but no maggots appeared in the meat. He put some of the same meat

in jars not protected by the gauze, and it was soon swarming with maggots. Then the microscope was employed, and the eggs of the flies were made visible to the eye; and people were convinced that the flies were as truly hatched as geese or chickens. The Italian's process of demonstration has been since employed on many other species of small creatures, until it was generally owned that all life is from the egg.

But this fact, if universal, would be fatal to the hypothesis of evolution. The famous old question, Whence came the chicken that laid the first egg? must be answered; and evolution cannot answer it. So the evolutionist casts around for some self-originated living beings. It happened that in 1836, electricity and galvanism were beginning to work their wonders in England, and Mr. Andrew Crosse found in the bath of his battery, composed of a caustic solution, some living mites. The discovery was hailed with triumph by the evolutionists. Galvanism, they declared, was the principle of life. If it could make mites, living mites, out of dead matter, why could it not in time make men? But Prof. Schultz set to work, upon Redi's plan of excluding the eggs, by excluding carefully the atmospheric air, which is full of all sorts of germs. The result was, that no mites were made by the battery. It was simply a nest for hatching the eggs deposited from the atmosphere. And so, the galvanic bath insects were conceded to be bred from eggs.

But the infusorial animalcules reopened the controversy. They swarm in infusions of hay, or of any vegetable or animal substances, and, under the forms of mould and other putrefactive organisms, are great nuisances to housekeepers, destroying their jams and jellies upon exposure to the air. Some of them are only 4000 of an inch in diameter. Could such small creatures have germs? Buffon thought it impossible, and put forth his

theory of organic molecules-molecules of living matter, the union of a multitude of which made a man, as the union of drops of water made a river. Perhaps these little creatures were Buffon's organic molecules. Needham tried to demonstrate that boiling the water would not prevent their appearance; but his apparatus was very defective. Animalcules appeared after the boiling. So the question of the spontaneous generation of the animalcules remained open, till Spallanzi, by boiling his infusion in long-necked glass flasks, and hermetically sealing them by melting their necks with a blow-pipe, completely excluded the air, and so the germs, and found no infusoria in his solutions.

Up to this point the existence of germs of creatures only 4 of an inch in diameter had been only an inference; nobody had ever seen them. Nobody, it was thought, could ever see such little things. But to Prof. Tyndall belongs the honor of giving an ocular demonstration of the existence of these ultra-microscopic germs. He noticed the motes floating in a sunbeam passing through a key-hole, and saw that the air is a perfect stirabout, filled with tens of thousands of specks; and he conceived the idea of testing them, whether they were germs or not. The passage of the air through cotton wool left a multitude of minute solid particles almost wholly destructible by heat, upon the wool; and these, when sowed in suitable solutions, bred animalcules. But what of those too small for even the solar beam to render visible? He found a method of rendering them visible in the mass, as the blue vapor of water is made visible in the sky, though we cannot see each of the minute drops. He passed the electric beam of light through air charged with these ultra-microscopic germs, which reflect the beam of light, being solid bodies, and so rendered it visible. But if the air is free of them, no light is visible.