300 The Microscope. 



Finally, within the last quarter of a century, largely by men 

 still living, the contention over the spontaneous derivative, more 

 especially of the simplest plants, the bacteria, has been animated, 

 the experimentation and analysis exact and searching. Undoubt- 

 edly, the result has been a disbelief, on the part of a great majority 

 of naturalists, in archebiosis. On the other hand, there are those 

 who maintain that it is not so much a matter of experiment as a 

 logical sequence of the doctrine of evolution. 



Following the astronomer's ideas of the evolution of the earth, 

 there was a time when the conditions were such that life could not 

 exist; afterwards, conditions were favorable, the lowest forms origi- 

 nated spontaneously by the forces of nature, and, from these begin- 

 nings, all subsequent hosts, great and small, have been evolved. 



The more conservative philosophers, who can believe in the 

 spontaneous generation of life only on experimental evidence, are, 

 nevertheless, logical in holding a belief in evolution of plants and 

 animals as a fact, since the natural laws known as Darwinism apply 

 only to already existing conscious forms. To this class the origin of 

 life is a mystery, transcendental. 



Our swarms of heteromita, then, arose in the nutrient infusion 

 from germs derived from air and water, or by clinging to the 

 hay. These germs, in turn, took their origin and potentiality from 

 heteromitas infinitely near this one in characters, and so, backward, 

 indefinitely from another so-called species or an original ancestral 

 form for whose origin science is not able to account. 



Admitting the distinct nature of the two parallel series of living 

 beings, derived by the evolutionary processes, from a created begin- 

 ning, this interesting question arises, i. e.. Which was first estab- 

 lished ? As they are now found related, one sort depends wholly 

 upon the other for the creation of those complex compounds which 

 serve them for food, the source of substance and energy. Unless 

 this dependance of animals is an acquired habit, as a parasite 

 acquires habits of feeding upon the substance of its host, and at the 

 same time loses the ability to procure its food independently, the 

 vegetable representative must have preceded the animal. Paleon- 

 tology affords no evidence affecting the question one way or the 

 other. The earliest evidence of life in the Laurentian rocks points 

 to the cotemporaneous existence of plants and animals. In the 

 absence of facts, men speculate. A certain chemical compound, 

 chlorophyl, seems to be necessary to protoplasm that it may maintain 

 and increase itself. Hence the query. Was the primitive protoplasm 



