318 ^ag S-ermans, (Kssags, anb |iefmfos. [xm. 



rable exposition of them, which Mr. Darwin has given, 

 and see nothing there but a " derniere erreur du dernier 

 siecle" a personification of Nature leads us indeed 

 to cry with him : "0 lucidite* ! solidite de 1'esprit 

 Fran$ais, que devenez-vous V 



M. Flourens has, in fact, utterly failed to comprehend 

 the first principles of the doctrine which he assails so 

 rudely. His objections to details are of the old sort, so 

 battered and hackneyed on this side of the Channel, that 

 not even a Quarterly Eeviewer could be induced to 

 pick them up for the purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin 

 over again. We have Cuvier and the mummies ; M. 

 Roulin and the domesticated animals of America ; the 

 difficulties presented by hybridism and by Palaeontology ; 

 Darwinism a rifacciamento of De Maillet and Lamarck ; 

 Darwinism a system without a commencement, and its 

 author bound to believe in M. Pouchet, &c. &c. How 

 one knows it all by heart, and with what relief one reads 

 at p. 65 



" Je laisse M. Darwin ! " 



But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling our 

 readers' attention to his wonderful tenth chapter, " De 

 la Prdexistence des Germes et de rEpigdnese/' which 

 opens thus : 



"Spontaneous generation is only a chimsera. This point esta- 

 blished, two hypotheses remain : that of pre-existence and that of 

 epigenesis. The one of these hypotheses has as little foundation as 

 the other." (P. 163.) 



" The doctrine of epigenesis is derived from Harvey : following by 

 ocular inspection the development of the new being in the Windsor 

 does, he saw each part appear successively, and taking the moment 

 of appearance for the moment of formation he imagined epigenesis" 

 (P. 165.) 



On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 167), 



" The new being is formed at a stroke (tout cCun coup), as a whole, 

 instantaneously ; it is not formed part by part, and at different times. 



