ORIGIN OF ANIMAL LIPB. 27 



cases in which we arc baflled, in the attempt to explain how 

 i uuils ondil possibly find their way to the places where they 

 are disrovrml, but spontaneous generation is not an acceptable 

 solution of the difficulty. Xo one supposed that the fish which 

 icartney found in a pond, in the middle of an island far 

 -iy from any continent, and which seemed to have been thrust 

 up from the bed of the ocean by a volcano, were produced 

 spontaneously ; yet how they got there is inexplicable" Why 

 should they not be produced spontaneously? Small animals 

 would develope out of the vegetable matter which grew in the 

 water. These would enlarge and alter, as the water gradually 

 changed from the different substances draining into it ; and at 

 lost, a full grown fish would be developed, suitable for living in 

 the pond, and capable of propagating its species too. In this 

 view there is nothing inexplicable about it. Spontaneous 

 generation, is merely the result, and continuation, of the law and 

 order of Creation, at the beginning. 



In opposition to the theory of spontaneous generation, or 

 Evolution, its sister theory, Agassiz maintains the doctrine 

 of special creation. But we perceive no material dif- 

 ference between special creation and Evolution, as we have 

 explained ifc. For instance, would it be more difficult for the 

 Creator to order at the beginning tor all time, that just as 

 certain materials were mixed together under certain conditions 

 such as warmth, moisture, and air an animal would 

 result, of a character and kind suitable to the material it was 

 born in ; than to interpose in a special manner, whenever any 

 chemist should bo chancing to mingle creative substances, or 

 wherever a new kind of preserve was storing, or some fruit was. 

 decomposing 1 



