SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 29 



the origination of the present race of beings on the globe ; and 

 out of the contemplation of this idea arose the question as to 

 whether the Creator has not continued to exercise the creative 

 faculty at all times, even to the present day. They recognize the 

 Creator's controlling hand when they see the child resembling the 

 parent ; it is not blind chance to them that like comes from like ; 

 there must be some reason for this, and the reason they give is 

 that the Creator is continually active in the administration of his 

 laws. If, therefore, he is visibly present in the operation of one 

 series of acts, it may be that he still continues to carry on another 

 series, which we know he has at some time in the remote past 

 begun. At some unknown, distant period, animals originated 

 through creative influence on this globe. 



Now, then, the question arose in this form, namely, did all ani- 

 mals, which have appeared from the beginning, originate by birth 

 from the first created ; or is this only one mode of continuing their 

 presence on the earth, and has the Creator also constantly repeated 

 his original creation through all time, even until now ? This 

 question arose from various reasons, and among others, because 

 observers had noticed the fact, that, when a pond or stream, or a 

 whole tract of country, dries up, as oftentimes happens in the 

 summer months, as a natural consequence, all the animals and 

 plants in it, which are dependent upon water for their existence, 

 die for want of their natural element; but when the rains of 

 autumn have refilled these streams and ponds, the aquatic ani- 

 mals appear again. This some observers accounted for by sup- 

 posing that the eggs and seeds of these animals and plants were 

 constantly floating in the air, and were washed down by the rains, 

 and thus the ponds became restocked with life ; but other ob- 

 servers disputed the fact that there were seeds and eggs floating 

 about in the air, or insisted that they were in such small numbers 

 that they could not possibly account for the sudden appearance 

 of such large quantities of living creatures in these ponds ; and 

 therefore they propounded the idea that they originated there 

 exactly in the same way as did the first aquatic animals that 

 originally began life in the rivers and ponds of this globe ; that 

 is, they were created there. 



