168 ANDREW JACKSON HOWE. 



quairrted with the products of the different geological 

 strata, and recognized the order in which they are 

 superimposed, generally finding that the lowest forms 

 of animal and vegetable life appeared first in the or- 

 der of succession, and that higher grades followed, 

 yet not systematically. He often found the remains 

 of higher forms in the lower beds ; and called atten- 

 tion to the fact as demonstrating that the simplest or- 

 ganic structures did not always exist before those 

 which were more complicated in their organization. 

 These points show that he would not have been a 

 champion of evolution if he had lived at the present 

 time, for the same arguments yet remain unanswered. 

 Those who would make out that Hunter was an evo- 

 lutionist, make him say while he was studying the de- 

 velopment of embryo-birds that "he had seen enough 

 to convince him that every higher creature, in its 

 transformation from a germ to the end of its foetal 

 state, passed through a series of changes, in each of 

 which it exhibited traces of the perfect form of some 

 order lower than itself." But this does not show that 

 he believed in spontaneous generation, and that proto- 

 plasm was the origin of life. Many of those who 

 look upon the doctrine of evolution as fanciful, are 

 willing to admit that a part of the scheme is true 

 true to a certain extent true as a method of organic 

 development, but not as the beginning of organic 

 life not as demonstrating the origin of the vital prin- 

 ciple. Vitality may have attributes which, under the 

 influence of various forces in nature, might be able to 

 modify the organic material with which it is insepa- 

 rably connected. Hunter believed that the vital prin- 

 ciple combined with it, as one of its attributes, a moiety 

 of intelligence, and that this was in some degree con- 



