30 PRIMARY AND CONTINUED CREATION. 



In support of this theory they sought to contrive some way by 

 which they might construct artificial ponds which should be shut 

 off from the surrounding air, and therefore no floating or flying 

 seeds or eggs, if they really existed, could gain access to these 

 isolated waters. There have been several contrivances set up 

 which were destined to carry out this plan, and among others, 

 the one which I have already described to you. The various 

 kinds of fluids, such as beef-juice, mutton-juice, sugar-water, 

 ammonia, gelatine, &c., which were introduced in the different 

 experiments, were for the purpose of furnishing a diversity of 

 conditions and food for the creatures which might originate 

 therein, and also to imitate the decomposed contents of stagnant 

 pools and ditches ; the heat which was applied to the flasks was 

 to kill all life that might be in the fluid ; and the air was allowed 

 to enter the flasks, as they cooled down, through red-hot tubes, 

 in order that whatever seeds or eggs there were floating in the 

 air might be killed by the heat, and the air then would be pure. 



In the hermetically sealed flask, C, (p. 16,) the air and the fluid 

 are sealed up before heating, so that after boiling in the Papins 

 digester, this little world within the glass cools down without 

 the least possible chance of communication with anything ex- 

 ternal to it. 



Under these circumstances, the advocates of the continued 

 creation of animals to the present day, claim, that, if living creat- 

 ures do appear in these isolated pools in the flasks, they must 

 have originated there without the previous intervention of a 

 parental form, because all life had previously been extinguished 

 by the heat. From this, then, they argue, that, when the dried-up 

 pools and streams are refilled by the autumn rains, the animals 

 which appear therein originate on the spot, in the same way as 

 did the first animals that peopled this world. 



As I said before, at the end of my last lecture, the fact that 

 the experiments with the sealed flasks proved that motile beings, 

 undoubted living beings, originated where life could not by any 

 means have existed previously, is a sufficient basis for a further 

 assumption that still higher forms could arise from these. Keep- 

 ing in mind now what has been said about the extreme sim- 



