122 HYPOTHESIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



and vegetable. We have seen that it is a form of being which 

 there is some reason to believe electric agency will produce 

 though not perhaps usher into full life in albumen, one of 

 those component materials of animal bodies, in whose com- 

 binations it is believed there is no chemical peculiarity for- 

 bidding their being any day realized in the laboratory. 

 Remembering these things, it seems, after all, an obvious idea 

 that a chemico- electric operation, "by which germinal vesicles . 

 were produced, was the first phenomenon in organic creation, 

 and that the second was an advance of these through a suc- 

 cession of higher grades, and a variety of modifications, in 

 accordance with laws of the same absolute nature as those by 

 which the Almighty rules the physical department of nature. 



Leaving the first of these supposed processes to rest upon 

 the arguments which have been adduced with regard to a 

 possible transition from the inorganic to the organic, as a 

 natural fact, we have two things to be accounted for first, 

 grade ; and, second, external peculiarities. We have to con- 

 vince ourselves, both that a fish may advance to be a reptile, 

 and a reptile to*be a bird being a distinct step onward in 

 complexity of organization and that particular organs are 

 capable of being modified, so as to suit external conditions, 

 for example, the bill of a bird to the picking up of food in 

 shallow waters, or the throat of the foetal marsupial to the 

 reception of the mother's milk without a danger of choking. 



With regard to grade, it may be admitted at once that, in 

 Nature's government, there is no observable appearance of 

 such promotions. But it may be asked, if, supposing such 

 events to be within the scope of nature, we are necessarily to 

 expect to see them take place, or even to hear of them having 

 been recorded. To settle this question, let us first inquire 

 into the proportion of the number of these grades to the space 

 of time believed to be represented in the fossiliferous series of 

 rocks. Mr. Lyell tells us that the space between our sun and 

 some of the remote star- clusters, of which the distance to 

 Sirius (not less than nineteen millions of millions of miles) is 

 but a fraction, may no more than compare with the space of 



