l6o THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



erel were produced. The eelgrass of the river was 

 supposed to yield eels in a similar fashion. The dead 

 bodies of animals were supposed to turn into mag- 

 gots. Such crude ideas of spontaneous generation 

 are no longer possible. The whole science of bacteri- 

 ology absolutely presupposes the impossibility of spon- 

 taneous generation in the flasks and test tubes of the 

 laboratory. One or two men of otherwise good stand- 

 ing in science still maintain that they are getting new 

 life in their own test tubes, but they fail utterly to 

 persuade the scientific world. I think it is a fair state- 

 ment of the position of science to-day to say that there 

 is no evidence whatever of spontaneous generation, 

 excepting the presence of life upon the globe. 



Not all has been said, however, on this question. 

 The chemist is learning in the laboratory to produce 

 many substances which, until very recent times, were 

 produced only in the bodies of animals or plants. Dye- 

 stuffs were originally gotten almost entirely from ani- 

 mal or plant material. At present the great majority 

 of them are made in the laboratory, and in not a few 

 cases they not only imitate the color of the older ma- 

 terial, but actually have identically the same compo- 

 sition and constitution. The laboratory-made mate- 

 rial is exactly like that made by the animals or the 

 plants. 



The same is true with regard to a large number of 



