GENERATION OF INSECTS. 9 



affirms, that even in his time, when the earth was 

 supposed to be growing too old to be reproductive, 

 " many animals were concreted out ot" mud by 

 showers and sunshine*." 



But the ancients, it would appear, had the 

 shrewdness seldom to venture upon illustrations of 

 their philosophical romances by particular examples. 

 This was reserved for the more reckless theory- 

 builders of our own times. We find Robinet, for 

 example, asserting that, as it was nature's chief 

 object to make man, she began her " apprentissage," 

 as he calls it, by forming minerals resembling the 

 single organs of the human body, such as the brain 

 in the fossil called Brain-stone {Meandrina cerebri- 

 formh, ParkinsonI). Darwin, again, taking the 

 hint from Epicurus, dreams that animals arose from 

 a single filament or threadlet of matter, which, by 

 its efforts to procure nourishment, lengthened out 

 parts of its body into arms and other members. 

 For example, after this filament had improved itself 

 into an oyster, and been by chance left dry by the 

 ebbing of the tide, its efforts to reach the water 

 again expanded the parts nearest to the sea into arms 

 and legs. If it tried to rise from its native rocks, 

 the efforts produced wings, and it became an insect, 

 which in due course of time improved itself by fresh 

 efforts till it became a bird, the more perfect members 

 being always hereditarily transmitted to the progeny. 

 The ditlerent forms of the bills of birds, whether 

 hooked, broad, or long, were, he says, gradually 

 acquired by the perpetual endeavours of the creatures 

 to supply their wants. The long-legged water- 



* Multaque nunc etiam existunt animaVia terris, 

 Imbribus et calido soils concreta vapore. 



De Nat. Rer. v. 795. 



f Robinet, Consid. Philosophiques dc la Gradation Naturelle 

 des Formes de TEtre. Paris, 1768. 



