210 Life on the Earthy its Origin ana Successio?i, 



swer seems to have been an Infusory Animalculum, before the scrutiny 

 of the microscope had shewn the real complexity of most of these chil- 

 dren of unknown fathers, the transition stages of others, the definite 

 course of life of all. At present the first hopeful product of the crypto- 

 gamy of electricity and carburetted moisture would be a fertile cell, for 

 cells are the ultimate term of the mechanical analysis of organic beings. 

 " Given then a cell with walls j composed of carbon, hydrogen and 

 oxygen ; capable of self-division and so of increasing in number. Let 

 it be born in the sea according to Telliamed, or, in moisture, or slime, 

 according to Lamarck, or if it suit better the following phenomena, in 

 the air. What follows ? An aggregation of cells. Plant or animal ? 

 Perhaps neither, but a living being, capable not of moving, but of being 

 moved, says Lamarck, by the external powers influential on life, like 

 Volvox. What next ? Reproduction of other Volvoces by self-division, 

 or the growth of new individuals within the parent. 



" Here the process, so far as our knowledge and observation go, at 

 present, must stop — the aggregate of cells breaks up into smaller aggre- 

 gates, or is resolved into solitary cells again, and our little circle of 

 discovery is completed. 



*' Given, therefore, something more ; a current of water guided by 

 cilia through the mass ; removal and renewal of cells ; addition of a 

 new substance to line the canals, in forms determined by these currents ; 

 the growth of germs capable of being separated and going through the 

 same series of events ; in short a sponge, for the possession of which 

 Botany and Zoology have had a long conflict, and which seems placed 

 at the very lowest limit of specific life. 



*' What is the next step, or rather leap, is hard to say ; for if we go to 

 the minute Foraminifera, that is a group of aggregated and perforated 

 shells, with cilia, which helps us very little or not at all in the advance- 

 ment of animalization ; but if we ascend per saltum to the Zoophyta 

 most allied to Spongiadae, and claim afiinity with Alcyonium, we require 

 the large postulates of freely moving polypi, with eight arms round the 

 contractile mouth, a complete digestive cavity, and ova of definite 

 character. 



" Then again is another hiatus between the Alcyonidse and the Mol- 

 lusca, which neither fossil nor recent life can fill ; and thus in what 

 seem to be the first and easiest steps we can imagine, nothing but pos- 

 tulate upon postulate will bring us on our way. But postulates in the 

 sense here used are equivalent to special endowments, not in the least 

 easier to conceive of than separate creations ; for what are these but 

 endowments, and has not every special structure its appropriate germ 

 and mode of growth? 



" If it is not possible in the existing ocean, among the innumerable 

 and variable radiated, amorphozoan, and foraminiferous animals, to 

 construct one chain of easily graduated life, from the fertile cell to the 

 prolific ovarium and digestive stomach, it must be quite in vain to look 

 for such evidence in the fossil state. In the face of the assumptions 

 requisite to imagine such a chain, we cannot venture to adopt it as a 



