252 SPRING. 



subject, these meet upon their confines), about the 

 production of animalculse, by fermentations and other 

 chemical operations, and of larger animals again by 

 the action of those animalculse, are very analagous to 

 those other theories of the earth that place it upon the 

 mountain, the mountain upon the cow's horn, the cow 

 upon the tortoise, and the tortoise upon they know 

 not what. The ascending or moving particles of air in 

 a fluid when in a state of fermentation, have, no doubt, 

 often been mistaken for living things ; but if chemistry 

 could make an animalcula, it could also make an 

 elephant. The inference from the whole operation of 

 nature, as we may trace it in the vernal season, is, that 

 the living principle, whether animal or vegetable, 

 admits of a wonderful range of extension, as well as 

 variety of developement ; that that v/hich is developed 

 in the course of nature, whether in the ordinary pro- 

 gress of the season, or by those artificial means which 

 experience has taught man that he can apply with 

 success, is merely the application of circumstances 

 favourable to its action, to that which had existence 

 before ; that the more that those rudiments of life, or 

 life itself in any of its varied forms, is confined in space, 

 the more vigorous and the more indestructible it is ; 

 that, therefore, not one of the species could by possi- 

 bility arise, or have arisen, out of any combination or 

 operation of the others ; but that all the varied races 

 in nature, however countless may have been their gene- 

 rations, are traceable backward from offspring to parent, 

 until we come to the immediate act of creative power ; 

 which power, though no observation can find out all 

 that it has done, and no imagination can picture to 



