214: PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT. 



from which the simpler species in the vegetable and animal 

 world may, under certain circumstances, derive their origin. 

 Reference is made to the vegetable-like forms of frost on the 

 window, and to the shrub-like form of crystallization known 

 to chemistry as the Arbor Diance also to the vegetable-like 

 forms of some of the ordinary appearances of the electric 

 fluid ; and from these phenomena the writer argues the prob- 

 ability that electricity is largely concerned in the origination 

 and growth, not only of crystals, but of plants, which assume 

 forms according to specific generative and other conditions. 

 Moreover, the growth of certain plants for which no seeds 

 were sown, and in situations where it is next to impossible 

 that such seeds could have existed, is thought to add proba- 

 bility to the theory of a possible spontaneous germination of 

 vegetable forms without the ordinary seminal mode of origi- 

 nation pfovided such changes are suddenly made in the in- 

 gredients and conditions of a soil as are favorable to the 

 development of organic from inorganic forms. The author 

 also mentions the singular facts that oats cropped down so as 

 to prolong the period of their growth, have been known to 

 progress, by regular transmutation, into the form of rye ; and 

 that the cabbage is known to be, in its native state, a trailing 

 sea-side plant, totally different from the plant in its cultivated 

 form. These latter facts, with others, are thought to strongly 

 support the theory of a transmutation of species from lower 

 to higher forms. 



4. The formation of entozoa, *or animals within animals, 

 where their eggs could not possibly have been deposited, is 

 thought to argue powerfully for the independent generation of 

 the lower animal forms, when certain conditions obtain that are 

 favorable. This argument is thought to be strengthened by 

 the fact that insects of a low species (the acarus) were repeat- 



