ORIGIN OF PLANTS. 225 



Rcted upon by electricity, he can produce certain livino^ ani- 

 malculse of the mite family, — the vital and the organized out 

 of the inorganic and the dead. In all such cases, electricity, 

 or rather, according to Oken, galvanism, is regarded as the 

 ^'italizing principle. " Organism,^' says the German, " is ^ra?- 

 vamsm residing in a thoroughly homogeneous mass. .... 

 A galvanic pile pounded into atoms must become alive. In 

 this manner nature brings forth organic bodies." I have even 

 heard it seriously asked whether electricity be not God ! 

 Alas ! could such a god, limited in its capacity of action, like 

 those " gods of the plains" in which the old Syrian trusted, 

 have wrought, in the character of Creator, with a variety of 

 result so endless, that in no geologic period has repetition 

 taken place ? In all that purports to be experiment on the 

 development side of the question, we see nothing else save 

 repetition. The Acarus Crossii of Mr Weekes is not a new 

 species, but the repetition of an old one, which has been long 

 known as the Acarus liorridus, a little bristle-covered crea- 

 ture of the mite family, that harbours in damp comers among 

 the debris of outhouses, and the dust and dirt of neglected 

 workshops and laboratories. Nay, even a change in the 

 chemical portion of the experiment by which he believed the 

 creature to be produced failed to secure variety. A power- 

 ful electric fluid had been sent, in the first instance, through 

 a solution of silicate of potash, and, after a time, the Acarus 

 horridus crawled out of the fluid. The current was then sent 

 through a solution of nitrate of copper, and, after a due space, 

 the Acarus horridus again creeped out. A solution of ferro- 

 cyanate of potash was next subjected to the current, and yet 

 again, and in greater numbers than on the two former occa- 

 sions, there appeared, as in virtue, it would seem, of its ex- 

 traordinary appetency, to he the same ever-recurring Acarus 

 horridus. How, or in what form, the little creature should 

 have been introduced into the several experiments, it is not 



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