166 THE AMEEICAN MOISTHLY [September, 



ignorant of nature, fancy peopled jungle and forest with real and unreal ani- 

 mals spontaneously generated ; this, too, was logical. Aristotle taught that 

 this was one of the regular and natural modes for the production of living 

 forms. As knowledge advanced the number of species thus accounted for 

 faded away. After the microscope revealed a new world of minute exist- 

 ences, whose origin was still more difficult to verify, the belief was again 

 strong that these were forms of life without parentage. But one after another 

 of the coarser forms was studied and proved to follow as definite a life-history 

 as the largest animals. 



Recent progress in drawing hard and fast lines about the personality of the 

 myriad species of minute organisms leads us to wonder that so late as 1871-2, 

 in the Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence and also in the New Haven Jotinial of Scie?ice and Art^ same date, 

 pp. 20 and 88, there appeared a discussion seriously purporting to trace a 

 sequence of forms from Protococcus or Chlatnydococcus to the spirally 

 pedunculate Vorticella ; then Oxytricha and perhaps Rotifer. 



This is truly imaginative and poetic ' science.' The day for such is al- 

 most, but not wholly, gone ; but the ' beginnings of life ' have served their 

 time, let some other branch hereafter have the honor. 



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. Undoubtedly, 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 wei^e favorable, the low'est forms originated spontaneously by the 

 forces of nature, and, from these beginnings, all subsequent hosts, great and 

 small, have been evolved. 



The more conservative philosophers who can believe in the sj^ontaneous 

 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. 



Our swarms of Heteromita, then, arose in the nutrient infusion from germs 

 derived from air or 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 beingj._ 

 derived by the evolutionary processes, from a created beginning, this ii^^Q^ 

 esting question arises, /. e., which was first established.^ As they are f^^g^j 

 fovmd related, one sort depends wholly upon the other for the creation of ^ ^^j 

 complex compounds which serve them for food, the source of substan, p^^-^. 

 energy. Unless this dependence of animals is an acquired habit, as ^^ game 

 site acquires habits of feeding upon the substance of its host, and at tl^ j-gpj-e. 

 time loses the ability to procure its food independently, the vegetabl •^gj^(,g 

 sentative must have preceded the animal. Paleontology affords no r jj^^ j^-^ 

 affecting the question one way or the other. The earliest evidence j.^^^^g ^j^j 

 the Laurentian rocks points to the cotemporaneous existence of f^,- „i ^^,,-, 

 animals. In the absence or tacts men speculate. A certam che ^^^.^j^-^^^^j^^ 

 pound, chlorophyl, seems to be necessary to protoplasm that it n" ' ^^ i;]^^ (-hat 

 and increase itself. Hence the query, was the primitive protopl' 



