IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. 245 



rligious number of those sea-productions of different qualities, 

 especially of rose-trees, which had their roses very red when 

 they came out of the sea. I was there presented with a 

 cluster of black sea-grapes. It was at the time of the vint- 

 age, and there were two grapes perfectly ripe." 



Now, all this, and much more of the same nature, ad- 

 dressed to the Parisians of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, 

 passed, I doubt not, wonderfully well ; but it will not do now, 

 when almost every young girl, whether in town or country, 

 is a botanist, and works on the algae have become popular. 

 Since Maillet wrote, Hume promulgated his argument on 

 Miracles, and La Place his doctrine of Probabilities. There 

 can be no doubt that these have exerted a wholesome influ- 

 ence on the laws of evidence ; and by these laws, as restricted 

 and amended, — laws to which, both in science and religion, 

 we ourselves conform, — we insist on trying the Lamarckian 

 hypothesis, and in condemning it, — should it be found to 

 have neither standing in experience nor support from testi- 

 mony, — as a mere feverish dream, incoherent in its parts and 

 baseless in its fabric. Give, we ask, but one well-attested 

 instance of transmutation from the algae to even the lower 

 forms of terrestrial vegetation common on our sea-coasts, and 

 we will keep the question open, in expectation of more. It 

 will not do to tell us, — as Cuvier was told, when he appealed 

 to the fact, determined by the mummy birds and reptiles of 

 Egypt, of the fixity of species in all, even the slightest par- 

 ticulars, for at least three thousand years, — that immensely 

 extended periods of time are necessary to effect specific 

 changes, and that human observation has not been spread 

 over a period sufficiently ample to furnish the required data 

 regarding them. The apology is simply a confession that, in 

 these ages of the severe inductive philosophy, you have been 

 dreaming your dream, cut off, as if by the state of sleep, from 

 all the tangibilities of the real waking-day world, and tbali 



