144 



THE AMERICAN MONTHLY, 



[August, 



morphosis, and manner of origin, of 

 the immeasurably lesser forms, which 

 are not seen at all until the lens need- 

 ful to discover the germination of an 

 oak tree is used. As we pass down- 

 ward, v/e come to less and still lesser 

 forms, all equally endowed for, and 

 adapted to, their environments. But 

 as we come to the more and the most 

 minute of the organic forms in nature 

 at present discoverable by us, we 

 come upon forms that multiply with 

 inconceivable rapidity; many of 

 them will, by one process of multipli- 

 cation alone, produce, in the course 

 of three hours, as many individuals 

 as there are human inhabitants on 

 the surface of this earth; and in a 

 paper read only a few days ago, in 

 the French Academy of Science, M. 

 Pasteur, proposing to destroy Phyl- 

 loxera by fungoid growths, said: "The 

 extraordinary multiplication of Phyl- 

 loxera is a mere trifle compared with 

 the power of life and propagation of 

 certain parasites. The Hall of the 

 Academy of Science ... is pretty 

 large: it has hundreds of cubic me- 

 tres of capacity. I would undertake," 

 said Pasteur, " to fill it with a liquid 

 of such a nature, that by sowing in it 

 a microscopic organism, the whole of 

 the immense vessel would in a few 

 hours, be troubled with the presence of 

 the parasite, and in such great abun- 

 dance, that all the Phylloxeras in the 

 world, compared in numbers to the 

 individuals of the parasite, would be 

 like a drop of water in the sea." But 

 their modes of multiplication, in their 

 completeness, are either defiantly be- 

 yond our present powers of research, 

 or if here and there known at all, they 

 have to be very patiently, persistent- 

 ly, and with the highest powers of the 

 microscope worked out. 



Now, whoever engages in this work 

 will learn many things indicative of 

 caution, and will be slow indeed to 

 make hasty inferences. 



There happens to be, however, a 

 fine army of such workers in the 

 world just now; men who, with all 

 the necessary mental endowments and 



training, are, with the most splen- 

 did lenses the world can produce, 

 working amongst the mazes of this 

 wonderful margin and edge of living 

 things. They are trying to individ- 

 ualize the components of the appa- 

 rently confused mass, and make out 

 the life-histories of the minutest of 

 living things. And they are slowly 

 succeeding. Life-history after life- 

 history is being drawn by resolve and 

 patience from the depths of the con- 

 fusion: — and with what result ? Every 

 where, where the work has been ex- 

 haustively done, with the affirmation 

 that biological processes amongst the 

 least and lowest living things are 

 as orderly rigid, and within certain 

 limits as capable of predication, as 

 amongst the butterflies or the ento- 

 mostraca. 



There are men, forever working 

 amongst the forms of life, similar to, 

 or identical v/ith, those brought be- 

 fore us in the papers the inferences 

 of which I seek to controvert. But 

 they use far higher magnifying pow- 

 er, and pursue another method of re- 

 search essentially exact ; do they 

 reach the same results ? Do they in- 

 fer that one form of minute life may 

 transform itself into another ? That 

 the protoplasm from a cell of Chara 

 or Nitella may become, of its own ca- 

 price, or by some hidden law, and 

 without the intervention of parent or 

 egg, a Paramsecian ? 



Verily, no ! The testimony of Bal- 

 biani, Pasteur, Van Beneden, Biitschli, 

 Fol, Hackel, Huxley, Pelletan, Asa 

 Gray, Louis Agassiz, H. J. Clarke, 

 W. Roberts, Balfour, Ray Lankester, 

 Ewart, and a host of others is unani- 

 mous — and it is this — that wherever 

 we work out a minute life-history 

 thoroughly, we come upon as orderly 

 a process of nature as in the develop- 

 ment of a frog or the growth, from 

 its fertilized germ, of a primrose. 



All this of course is no reason why 

 others should not find what is, or 

 what seems to be, uncertainty or ca- 

 price in the lower strata of vital action 

 in nature. Only that they should do 



