EVIDENCE PROVING THE STATEMENT OF THE CASE 147 



remain where we placed the dead body. 1 In all 

 fossil remains, the soft parts are obliterated ; they have 

 been altered into the liquid or gaseous, and so complete 

 are the molecular reactions in fossils that the entire 

 original substance has in many cases been removed. 

 Not a muscle nor a nerve has ever yet been discovered 

 in a fossil, although by molecular displacement copies 

 of the soft parts are sometimes retained. Where 

 have these soft structures gone ? The above answer 

 is the only conceivable one. While if we burn the 

 body, the transformation only takes place more 

 quickly. These are facts, undoubted facts. See 

 how they operate in the conception we are now 

 imbibing, even to account for a few of the physical 

 operations in Nature. The oxygen exhaled by the 

 vegetable, the re-combination in the animal body, the 

 carbonic acid gas given out by the animal and re- 

 absorbed by the vegetable, and the re-secretion of the 

 carbon by the vegetable, again 'the re-exhalation of 

 the oxygen these are processes of re-generation. To 



1 " In the compact substance of a femur that had been long buried, 

 Aeby found only 16'5 per cent, of animal matter." (" Quain's 

 Elements of Anatomy," vol. i. part 2, Histology, 1893, p. 254.) 



" Whether in the free atmosphere, or under the earth, which is 

 always more or less impregnated with air, all animal and vegetable 

 matters end by disappearing. To arrest these phenomena an ex- 

 tremely low temperature is required. It is thus that in the ice of the 

 Polar regions antediluvian elephants have been found perfectly intact. 

 The microscopic organisms could not live in so cold a temperature. 

 These facts still further strengthen all the new ideas as to the 

 important part performed by these infinitely small organisms, which 

 are, in fact, the masters of the world. If we could suppress their 

 work, which is always going on, the surface of the globe, encumbered 

 with organic matters, would soon become uninhabitable." (" Louis 

 Pasteur, His Life and Labours," 1885, p. 65.) 



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