ON EQUIVOCAL GENERATION. 125 



** the same particles of organic matter may form spontaneous 

 " microscopic animals, or microscopic vegetables, by chemi- 

 " cal dissolutions, and new combinations of organic matter, 

 " in watery fluids with sufficient moisture." 



But these microscopic vegetables and animals, there is every 

 reason to think, have as complete and exquisite an organic 

 structure as the larger plants and animals, and have as evident 

 marks of design in their organization, and therefore could not 

 have been formed by any decomposition or composition of 

 such dead matter, whether called organic or not, without the 

 interposition of an intelligent author. Besides, these microsco- 

 pic vegetables and animals are infinitely various, and therefore 

 could never arise from the same dead materials, in the same 

 circumstances, by the mere application of warmth and mois- 

 ture. Each of these vegetables and animals must, according to 

 the analogy of nature, have proceeded from an organized 

 germ, containing all the necessary parts of the future plant 

 or animal, as well as the largest trees and animals, though 

 their minuieness elude our search, and though the manner 

 in which their seeds or germs are conveyed from place to 

 place be unknown to us. But the attention that is given 

 to this subject by ingenious naturalists is continually dis- 

 covering a greater analogy between these microscopic vege- 

 tables, and animals and those of the largest kinds. This ar- 

 gument from the production of minute plants and animals has 

 no force but from our ignorance. 



" It is as difficult," he says, p. 7. " to understand the at- 

 " traction of the parts of coutchouk, and other kinds of at- 

 " traction, as the spontaneous production of a fibre from de- 

 " composing animal or vegetable substances, which contracts 

 " in a similar manner, and this constitutes the primordia of 

 " life." But admitting that the power by which a fibre con- 

 tracts to be not more difficult to comprehend than other con- 

 tractions, and that fibres are the primordia of life, whence 

 comes the regular arrangement of these fibres, and the various 

 system of vessels formed by them, for the purposes of nutrition, 

 the propagation of the species, &c. in the complex structure 

 of these minute animals. There is nothing like that in the 

 coutchouk, or any other substance that is not an animal. 



