CREATURES FORMED PIECE BY PIECE. 



73 



tion takes place. Gradually the minute particles acquire 

 body sufficient to enable us to distinguish them from the clear 

 medium by which they are surrounded. So that it seems 

 to me the evidence against spontaneous generation increases 

 in force as our means of investigation are improved. At 

 the same time it must be admitted that this doctrine is 

 still supported by some authorities of great repute. 



At the conclusion of one of his interesting essays, my 

 friend Dr. Child* puts a very pertinent question, and asks 

 why creatures may not be formed piece by piece, " as M. 

 Pouchet says, out of particles of dead matter, in the way 

 which he and Schaafhausen and Mantegazza tell us that 

 they have themselves witnessed ?" To this I should venture 

 to reply, that, as he is well aware, a host of facts have been 

 brought forward against the theory, while no good reasons 

 have been advanced in favour of supposing such a mode of 

 origin of living forms to be possible. As regards witnessing 

 such a formation of living beings out of dead matter all 

 that can be said is, that other observers who have employed 

 far higher powers than those referred to have never seen 

 anything of the kind. My own conviction is, that if crea- 

 tures are ever formed piece by piece out of particles of dead 

 matter, the operation will never be witnessed by mortals, 

 and I marvel that any one at all accustomed to careful 

 microscopical observation could succeed in persuading him- 

 self that he had actually seen the phenomenon supposed to 

 have occurred, f I consider the evidence that bacteria are 



* "Essays on Physiological Subjects." Second edition. 1869. 

 P. ill. 



f Dr. Child comments very severely on the microscopic observations 



