8 JOURNAL OF THE [January, 



I think it will be admitted that the evolution hypothesis is 

 under obligation to do more than merely cohere in itself, and 

 harmonize with the state of things it is intended to explain. If 

 it is to pass beyond the stage of hypothesis into that of law, it 

 must, sooner or later, establish itself upon ground that will ex- 

 clude the application of any other theory to the same class of 

 facts. In substantiation of it we must exhaust whatever resour- 

 ces of verification are at our command, and, so far as we assign 

 a cause or causes within the range of experimental science, we 

 should not rest satisfied until, as Professor Huxley has said, we 

 have shown that we can produce (or, at least, that there can be 

 produced) by the cause assumed, all the phenomena which we 

 have in nature, which are supposed to be effects of a like cause. 



But, notwithstanding Professor Huxley's great confidence in 

 the evolution theory as it now stands, there are numerous 

 points at which it would appear that strengthening evidence 

 might yet be advantageously applied. It is not within the scope 

 of an address like this, even if I had the ability, to indicate all 

 such weak places. My purpose is merely to point out a phase 

 of the subject, in which microscopists are likely to be specially 

 interested, and upon which the microscope will doubtless cast 

 light, if light is ever obtained. 



This introduces us into that mysterious and, as yet, almost 

 unexplored region of the Protista, or Protogenes, — upon the 

 further border of which lies the boundless ocean of organizable, 

 but unorganized, matter, from whose restless waves the new 

 philosophy in imagination witnesses the magic birth of Moner 

 or Amoeba, as the philosophers of three centuries ago thought 

 they saw the heterogenetic evolution of the Barnacle Goose. 

 Here is where we are most concerned with the modern evolu- 

 tion theory. Here is the point at which we workers with the 

 microscope are entitled to demand of its advocates an examina- 

 tion of the evidence, and an impartial scrutiny of the arguments 

 founded on it. 



One of the most earnest, thorough, and consistent supporters 

 of the theory is Professor Ernst Haeckel ; and he says : " the 

 fundamental idea which must necessarily lie at the bottom of all 

 natural theories of development, is that of a gradual develop- 

 ment of all (even the most perfect) organisms out of a single, or 

 out of a very few quite simple, and quite imperfect, original 



