in THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE 109 



theory was anticipated. Of this, however, as of 

 a still earlier anticipation, more presently. About 

 this period von Baer, in examining the embryos 

 of animals, showed that creatures so unlike one 

 another in their adult state as fishes, lizards, lions, 

 and men, resemble one another so closely in the 

 earlier stages of their development that no differ- 

 ences can be detected between them. But von 

 Baer was himself anticipated by Meckel, who wrote 

 as follows in 1 8 1 1 : * There is no good physiologist 

 who has not been struck, incidentally, by the observ- 

 ation that the original form of all organisms is one 

 and the same, and that out of this one form, all, the 

 lowest as well as the highest, are developed in such 

 a manner that the latter pass through the permanent 

 forms of the former as transitory stages ' (Osborn's 

 From the Greeks to Darwin , p. 212). In botany 

 Conrad Sprengel, who belongs to the eighteenth 

 century, had shown the work effected by insects in 

 the fertilisation of plants. Following his researches, 

 Robert Brown made clear the mode of the development 

 of plants, and Sir William Hooker traced their habits 

 and geographical distribution. Von Mohl discovered 

 that material basis of both plant and animal which 

 he named ' protoplasm.' In 1 844, nine years before 

 von Mohl told the story of the building-up of life 

 from a seemingly structureless jelly, a book appeared 

 which critics of the time charged with 'poisoning 

 the fountains of science, and sapping the foundations 

 of religion.' This was the once famous Vestiges of 

 Creation, acknowledged after his death as the work 

 of Robert Chambers, in which the origin and move- 

 ments of the solar system were explained as deter- 



