"Nageli proves that since the glacial period an alteration has taken place in Alpine plants, and the manner in which it occurred."

50 J. Broca, L'Ordre des Primates. Parallèle anatomique de l'homme and des singes, 1870.

51 Descent of Man, p. 367.

5o At the time at which we write, we have before us, unfortunately, only the incomplete reports of the daily papers, and the syllabus of Professor Max Müller's "Three Lectures on Mr. Darwin's Philosophy of Language."

53 Zöllner," Ueber die Natur der Kometen" (1 ed. p. 305).

54 For the further instruction of the reader, we will allow another Philosopher and Naturalist to speak respecting the primordial commencement of life, to our apprehension so simply accountable. The hypothesis of origin is under discussion. In the critical examination of the "Philosophie des Unbewussten" (7) it runs thus, p. 22. The "Philosophie des Unbewussten" says, p. 558 : "It is probable that before the origin of the first organisms, organic combinations existed which (p. 556) were under the influence of a damp atmosphere, abounding in carbonic acid, and of a higher temperature, light, and stronger electric influences. If these presuppositions are adopted, and the consideration added that if conditions thus favourable to primordial generation once existed, which they must have done they probably endured during considerable geological periods—the inference is in truth inevitable that in lapse of time and with change of circumstances, these organic substances aggregated into innumerable combinations. Among these innumerable modes of arrangement, groupings and combinations, by far the greater portion must remain at the grade of inorganic form, because it has not attained the needful chemical composition and physical properties; a very much smaller portion of the results produced by these combinations of organic materials might perhaps transitorily approach the organic form or even actually assume it, yet without possessing the constitution necessary to maintain it permanently; a third and yet smaller portion might perhaps maintain this form for itself in the exchange of material, about as long as the approximate duration of life of one of the most primitive of the present Protists, yet lacked those properties which preserve the species by division and reproduction after the

natural extinction of the individual; a fourth portion might possess the properties requisite for self-preservation as well as for the preservation of the genus, yet lacked that peculiar tendency to vary (Philosophie des Unbewussten, p. 591), or at least that tendency to vary in the particular direction which was alone capable of leading to development into higher forms; and finally a fifth portion possessed this property in addition to the others. It is the progeny of the fourth and fifth classes of our division which still populates the ocean and the earth.* From which species of Monera proceeded the advanced development of the Infusoria ; whether from one still living or from an extinct species we do not know as yet; but this much we may accept as certain, that the majority of the Protists that we still know, belong to that fourth class which is incapable of development. The persistence of the ephemeral creations of our second and third classes would naturally be secured only so long as circumstances continued favourable to their renewed primordial generation, but from the teleological standpoint the first class must be described as that of the completely abortive attempts at creation."

These, and similar more or less interesting fancies to which we attribute no great importance, are all derived from Haeckel's hypothesis of Autogony ("Generelle Morphologie der Organismen," 179 seq.), which he set up after his beautiful discoveries on the simplest organisms now existing-the Monera and the Protists. From this work we select the following passage:—“ Doubtless we must imagine the act of autogony, the first spontaneous origin of the simplest organisms, to be quite similar to the act of crystallization. In a fluid, holding in solution the chemical elements composing the organism, in consequence of certain movements of the various elements among themselves, certain points of attraction are formed, at which the atoms of the organogenetic elements (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen) enter into such close contact with one another that they unite in the formation of a complex ternary or quaternary molecule. This primary group of atomsperhaps a molecule of albumen-now acts like the analogous crystal

It is a simpler and more probable explanation that these low organisms continue to exist because there is room for them. They remain in spite of differentiation and in consequence of differentiation.

line molecule, attracting the homogeneous atoms dissolved in the mother wather; and they now likewise coalesce in the formation of similar molecules. The albuminous granule thus grows and transforms itself into a homogeneous organic individual, a structureless moner or mass of plasma, like a Protamæba, &c. Owing to the easy divisibility of its substance, this moner constantly tends towards the dissolution of its recently consolidated individuality, but when the constantly preponderating absorption of new substance outweighs the tendency to disintegration, it is able to preserve life by the exchange of material. The homogeneous organic individual, or moner, grows by means of imbibition (nutrition) only until the attractive power of the centre no longer suffices to hold the whole mass together. In consequence of the preponderating divergent movements of the molecules in different directions, two or more centres of attraction are now formed in the homogeneous plasma, which henceforth act attractively on the individual substance of the simple mould, and thereby induce its fission, or partition, into two or more portions (reproduction). Each part forthwith rounds itself again into an albuminous individual, or mass of plasma, and the eternal process begins again, of attraction and disruption of the molecules, producing the phenomena of exchange of substance, or nutrition, and reproduction."

Relying on the known peculiarities of the combinations of carbon, Haeckel has attributed to this substance the most important part in his representation of the first development of life and the physiological phenomena of the lowest organisms. This is the "carbon theory" so strongly deprecated by his antagonists. Minds would be less heated on the subject were it remembered that a refutation of this “adventurous attempt,” as Haeckel terms it, to assist the idea of genesis, would not change a hair in the compulsory logical necessity of acknowledging the evocation of life by natural means. The arguments against the carbon theory have been developed, among others, by Preyer, "Ueber die Erforschung des Lebens (Jena, 1873). It is shown that carbon, in its present terrestrial conditions, points almost exclusively to organic origin, and, as yet, no source of carbon has been demonstrated adequate for the first formation of living bodies on the earth.

55 A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (3rd ed.: London,

1872), and Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (2nd ed.: 1871).

56"The hypothesis of Pangenesis, as applied to the several great classes of facts just discussed, no doubt is extremely complex, but so assuredly are the facts. The assumptions, however, on which the hypothesis rests cannot be considered as complex in any extreme degree; namely, that all organic units, besides having the power, as is generally admitted, of growing by self-division, throw off free and minute atoms of their contents, that is, gemmules. These multiply, and aggregate themselves into buds and the sexual elements; their development depends on their union with other nascent cells, or units, and they are capable of transmission in a dormant state to successive generations.

"In a highly organised and complex animal, the gemmules thrown off from each different cell, or unit, throughout the body must be inconceivably numerous and minute. Each unit of each part, as it changes during development-and we know that some insects undergo, at least, twenty metamorphoses—must throw off its gemmules. All organic beings, moreover, include many dormant gemmules derived from their grand-parents and more remote progenitors. These almost infinitely numerous and minute gemmules must be included in each bud, ovule, spermaozoon, and pollen grain. Such an admission will be declared impossible, but, as previously remarked, number and size are only relative difficulties, and the eggs or seeds produced by certain animals or plants are SO numerous that they cannot be grasped by the intellect." Darwin, Variations of Animals and Plants, II. 526.

57 A. Rollet, Ueber die Erscheinungsformen des Lebens und den beharrlichen Zeugen ihres Zusammenhanges. Almanach der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften (Wien, 1872).

58 Darwin, Variations of Animals and Plants, I. 200.

59 V. Graber, Ueber den Tonapparat der Locustiden, ein Beitrag Darwinismus. Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie.

zum

Vol. 22.

60 Hermann v. Nathusius, Vorstudien für Geschichte und Zucht der Hausthiere zunächst am Schweineschädel, 1864.

61 Ib., p. 108.

6: Descent of Man, I. 412.

63 Origin of Species. 13th ed., p. 171.

6+ Lamarck also constructed a pedigree at the end of his “Philosophie Zoologique," in which he disposes of the greater number of classes, while he attributes to the remainder another point of derivation. He thus assumes in the animal kingdom two primordial forms derived from primordial generation. His scheme is as follows:

A comparison of this pedigree with the one which we now set up is extremely interesting, and shows the progress of our knowledge.