ORIGIN OF THE ANIMATED TRIBES. 1 1 1 



implied by an aboriginal creation of insects. The experi- 

 mentalist could never be considered as the author of the 

 existence of these creatures, except by the most unreasoning 

 ignorance. The utmost that can be claimed for, or imputed 

 to him is, that he arranged the natural conditions under 

 which the true creative energy that flowing from the 

 primordial appointment of the Divine Author of all things 

 was pleased to work in that instance. On the hypothesis 

 here brought forward, the acarus Crossii was a type of being 

 ordained from the beginning, and destined to be realized 

 under certain physical conditions. When a human hand 

 brought these conditions into the proper arrangement, it did 

 an act akin to hundreds of familiar ones which we execute 

 every day, and which are followed by natural results ; but it 

 did nothing more. The production of the insect, if it did 

 take place as assumed, was as clearly an act of the Almighty 

 himself, as if he had fashioned it with hands. For the pre- 

 sumption that an act of aboriginal creation did take place, 

 there is this to be said, that, in Mr. Weekes's experiment, 

 every care that ingenuity could devise was taken to exclude 

 the possibility of a development of the insects from ova. The 

 wood of the frame was baked in a powerful heat ; a bell- 

 shaped glass covered the apparatus, and from this the atmo- 

 sphere was excluded by the fumes constantly rising from the 

 liquid, for the emission of which there was an aperture so 

 arranged at the top of the glass, that only these fumes could 

 pass. The water was distilled, and the substance of the 

 silicate had been subjected to white heat. Thus every source 

 of fallacy seemed to be shut up. In such circumstances, a 

 candid mind, which sees nothing either impious or unphiloso- 

 phical in the idea of a new creation, will be disposed to ihink 

 that there is less difficulty in believing in such a creation 

 having actually taken place, than in believing that, in two 

 instances, separated in place and time, exactly the same 

 insects should have chanced to arise from concealed ova.( 54 ) 



