FULLER Q UO TA TIONS FROM ' ZOO NO MI A: 233 



vine, or by spiral contortions like the honeysuckle, or 

 by growing upon them like the mistleto, and taking 

 nourishment from their barks, or by only lodging or 

 adhering on them and deriving nourishment from the 

 air as tillandsia. 



" Shall we then say that the vegetable living filament 

 was originally different from that of each tribe of 

 animals above described? And that the productive 

 living filament of each of those tribes was different 

 from the other ? Or as the earth and ocean were pro- 

 bably peopled with vegetable productions long before 

 the existence of animals ; and many families of these 

 animals, long before other families of them, shall we 

 conjecture that one and the same kind of living filament 

 is and has leen the cause of all organic life ? * 



****** 



"The late Mr. David Hume in his posthumous works 

 places the powers of generation much above those of our 

 boasted reason, and adds, that reason can only make a 

 machine, as a clock or a ship, but the power of genera- 

 tion makes the maker of the machine ; and probably 

 from having observed that the greatest part of the 

 earth has been formed out of organic recrements, as the 

 immense beds of limestone, chalk, marble, from the 

 shells of fish; and the extensive provinces of clay, 

 sandstone, ironstone, coals, from, decomposed vegetables ; 

 all of which have been first produced by generation, 

 or by the secretion of organic life; he concludes that 

 the world itself might have been generated rather 

 than created ; that it might have been gradually pro- 

 * 'Zoonomia,' vol. i. p. 511. 



