LIVING AND NON-LIVING MATTER. 21 



neons generation, but a careful examination proves 

 them to have been mistaken. Microscopic living 

 beings appear after a time in water where vegetable 

 or animal matter has been left to decay, but we now 

 know that their eggs or seeds, in the shape of very 

 minute particles of bioplasm, are to be found in great 

 numbers floating about in the air and in every collec- 

 tion of water, and that these seeds or eggs retain 

 their life-powers after having been subjected to boil- 

 ing heat. Of course there was a first animal or vege- 

 table of each kind, and some learned men think it 

 was the offspring of another kind, not quite like it, 

 by some sort of change of form or of activity, so 

 that the more complicate forms sprang from more 

 simple ones. This doctrine of " evolution," as it is 

 called, has never been proved by facts, although the 

 varieties existing in the same species, as the different 

 kinds of dogs or pigeons, give it a sort of probability 

 to some persons. All kinds of living beings, how- 

 ever, spring from similar parents, and none have ever 

 been known to change into other forms. The forms 

 pictured upon the monuments of early Egyptian his- 

 tory are similar to those of the present day. New 

 varieties, not new kinds, may be produced by culture, 

 as in the case of roses and other flowers, but such will 

 return to their original form if allowed to grow wild. 

 5. The power of a living thing to preserve its own 

 identity amid all the material changes which take 



