Evolution. ■ 81 



apparatus all complete, is wonderful enough, but 

 there is something more wonderful, if possible, than 

 the mere growth; it is the original structure of the 

 machine, — the evolution of a complex organism 

 from a mass ©f matter having no trace of organs, — 

 through the agency of a principle within the matter 

 itself. In the Q%g of the bird, which is even more 

 complex than the eggs of most other animals, we 

 see a yolk surrounded by the albumen or white. 

 To the eye, unaided by the microscope, there ap- 

 pears one nearly homogeneous semi-fluid body sur- 

 rounded by another. The microscope reveals but 

 little more — certainly it reveals nothing in the ^^^ 

 that suggests the form or the organs of the bird 

 that is to come from it. The warmth of the moth- 

 er bird, or an equal amount of warmth from any 

 other source, is all that is needed, and in a certain 

 number of days, varying with the species, there 

 comes from that ^g% a bird perfect in all its parts. 

 The yolk and white have disappeared. Instead of 

 them you have bone and muscle and feathers, or- 

 gans of sense and digestion, and the whole compli- 

 cated machinery of a living animal. 



Now within that ^g^ was an artificer that for 

 want of a better name we call life. And the pro- 

 cess of this artificer's work we can watch from day 

 to day and from hour to hour, if we choose to do 

 so, and trace every step from the segregation of the 

 yolk and faint outline of a living form up to the 

 completion of the work. 



But the term life is generic, if we consider only 

 4* 



