508 Doctrine of Spontaneous Organization. 



as it is clear that all those animals which require to be tended 

 by a parent must have been first called into being in the adult 

 state, or they could not have subsisted. Even if we could 

 imagine, with Dr. Weissenborn, that a combination of cir- 

 cumstances may suffice to produce an organized being, still 

 it is necessary, in the case of most animals, and also numerous 

 plants, that a plurality of individuals comprising the two sex- 

 es should independently originate, or their species could not 

 be transmitted : hence we have not only to imagine an extra- 

 ordinary coincidence of circumstances concurring to produce 

 one adult elephant, (/. e. an animal old enough to support it- 

 self), but at least a couple of them, male and female ! The 

 very fact which Dr. Weissenborn calls particular attention to, 

 of the admirably minute adaptation of every species to its in- 

 digenous abode, furnishes but another argument against the 

 conclusions which he arrives at, when considered in relation 

 to the definite and distinct general types or separate plans of 

 structure on which they are so variously modified. 



With reference to plants, Dr. Prichard continues (at p. 50), 

 - — "It would be easy to discover districts, situated respectively 

 in North America and in Europe, or in Equinoctial America, 

 Africa, and Asia, in which all the same physical conditions 

 exist, namely, a parallel temperature and elevation, a similar 

 soil, and the same degree of humidity in the atmosphere ; yet 

 the species of plants in these several districts will be far from 

 being identical. The vegetable tribes will present, in each 

 respectively, analogies of form and general character; but few, 

 if any, of the same species will be found in localities thus se- 

 parated. 



" Instances may frequently be observed in which plants be- 

 come naturalized in countries where they had never existed 

 until they were conveyed by human agency, or by the acci- 

 dental transportation of seed. When this has once happened, 

 the results prove that the climate and all external conditions 

 are perfectly congenial to their nature, since they have spread, 

 in a short time, over extensive regions, and have appeared to 

 supplant, in some places, the indigenous tribes. Previously to 

 the importation of seeds, the physical conditions locally pre- 

 sent had no power of producing such plants, nor does it ap- 

 pear that their existence is so connected with external con- 

 ditions as to have been from the origin of things necessarily 

 or naturally co-extensive with them. When introduced they 

 multiply just as horses and oxen from Europe have produced 

 herds which cover the immense plains of Paraguay." 



That the creative energy is at present in operation, it does 

 not appear to me that we are in possession of a single fact, 



