xiii.] CRITICISMS ON &quot;THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.&quot; 277 



But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our readers 

 attention to his wonderful tenth chapter, &quot; De la Preexistence 

 des Germes et de 1 Epigenese,&quot; which opens thus : 



&quot; Spontaneous generation is only a chimaera. This point established, two 

 hypotheses remain : that of pre-existence and that of epigenesis. The one 

 of these hypotheses has as little foundation as the other.&quot; (P. 163.) 



&quot;The doctrine of epigenesis is derived from Harvey : following by ocular 

 inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor does, he saw 

 each part appear successively, and taking the moment of appearance for 

 the moment of formation he imagined epigenesis&quot; (P. 165.) 



On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 167), 



&quot; The new being is formed at a stroke (tout (Pun coup}, as a whole, 

 instantaneously ; it is not formed part by part, and at different times. It 

 is formed at once at the single individual moment at which the conjunction 

 of the male and female elements takes place.&quot; 



It will be observed that M. Flourens uses language which 

 cannot be mistaken. For him, the labours of Von Baer, of 

 Rathke, of Coste, and their contemporaries and successors in 

 Germany, France, and England, are non-existent : and, as 

 Darwin &quot;imagina&quot; natural selection, so Harvey &quot;imagina&quot; 

 that doctrine which gives him an even greater claim to the 

 veneration of posterity than his better known discovery of the 

 circulation of the blood. 



Language such as that we have quoted is, in fact, so pre 

 posterous, so utterly incompatible with anything but absolute 

 ignorance of some of the best established facts, that we should 

 have passed it over in silence had it not appeared to afford some 

 clue to M. Flourens unhesitating, d priori, repudiation of all 

 forms of the doctrine of progressive modification of living beings. 

 He whose mind remains uninfluenced by an acquaintance with 

 the phenomena of development, must indeed lack one of the 

 chief motives towards the endeavour to trace a genetic relation 

 between the different existing forms of life. Those who are 

 ignorant of Geology, find no difficulty in believing that the 

 world was made as it is ; and the shepherd, untutored in history, 

 sees no reason to regard the green mounds which indicate the 



