ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 121 



true, if there be no received truths with which it can be shown 

 in harmonious relation, has little chance of a favourable hear- 

 ing. In fact, as has been often observed, there is a measure 

 of incredulity from our ignorance as well as from our know- 

 ledge, and if the most distinguished philosopher three hundred 

 years ago had ventured to develop any striking new fact which 

 only could harmonize with the as yet unknown Copernican 

 solar system, we cannot doubt that it would have been uni- 

 versally scoffed at in the scientific world, such as it then was, 

 or, at the best, interpreted in a thousand wrong ways in 

 conformity with ideas already familiar. The experiments 

 above described, finding a public mind which had never dis- 

 covered a fact or conceived an idea at all analogous, were of 

 course ungraciously received. It was held to be impious even 

 to surmise that animals could have been formed through any 

 instrumentality of an apparatus devised by human skill. The 

 more likely account of the phenomena was said to be, that the 

 insects were only developed from ova, resting either in the 

 fluid, or in the wooden frame on which the experiments took 

 place. On these objections the following remarks may be 

 made. The supposition of impiety arises from an entire mis- 

 conception of what is implied by an aboriginal creation of 

 insects. The experimentalist could never be considered as the 

 author of the existence of these creatures, except by the most 

 unreasoning ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, 

 or imputed to him is, that he chanced to arrange or hit upon 

 the natural conditions under which the true creative energy 

 that flowing from the primordial appointment of the Divine 

 Author of all things was to work in that instance. On the 

 hypothesis here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type 

 of being ordained from the beginning, and destined to be 

 realized under certain physical conditions. When a human 

 hand brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it 

 did an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute 

 every day, and which are followed by natural results ; but it 

 did nothing more. The production of the insect, if it did take 

 place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty him- 

 self,- as if he had fashioned it with hands. For the presump- 

 tion that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, there is 

 this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, every care that 

 ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude the possibility of a 

 development of the insects from ova. The wood of the frame was 

 baked in a powerful heat ; a bell-shaped glass covered the appa- 

 ratus, and from this the atmosphere was excluded by the fumes 



