THE ACARUS CROSSII. 121 



besides fact and argument. These alleged phe- 

 nomena are open, like all others, to the test of 

 coimter-expiriment. Let them be subjected to it in 

 the most rigid manner, and set aside in the case 

 of failure. But to meet them merely with scoffs 

 and jests, or at the most, certain wholly gratuitous 

 assumptions as to a possibly various cause, is not 

 philosophical, and therefore deserves no conside- 

 ration. 



Ha\'ing thus presented vestiges of laws for the 

 origination and modification of organic being, I 

 must protest against proof of the existence of such 

 laws being held indispensable to the development 

 theork'. The earth, we see, has been peopled for 

 ages before man began to observe nature or 

 chronicle his observations. The organic world 

 attained what, appears to us completeness, in re- 

 mote ages. It is a thing done, as individual 

 reproduction is done at the birth of the new 

 creature. We are not, therefore, to expect con- 

 spicuous examples of either a new origin of life 

 or a modification of species at the present dav. 

 Though, therefore, not one unequivocal instance 

 of such origin and such modification could be pre- 

 sented, it would say nothing positive against the 

 hypothesis that species originated, and made a 

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