Ill CRITICISMS ON " THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES " 105 



But we cannot leave M. Flourens without calling 

 our readers' attention to his wonderful tenth 

 chapter, " De la Preexistence des Germes et de 

 1'Epigenese," which opens thus : 



" Spontaneous generation is only a chimaera. This point 

 established, two hypotheses remain : that of pre-existence and 

 that of epigcncsis. The one of these hypotheses has as little 

 foundation as the other. " (P. 163.) 



' ' The doctrine of epigenesis is derived from Harvey : follow- 

 ing by ocular inspection the development of the new being in 

 the Windsor does, he saw each part appear successively, and 

 taking the moment of appearance for the moment of formation 

 he imagined epigenesis." (P. 165.) 



On the contrary, says M. Flourens (p. 167),- 



" The new being is formed at a stroke (lout d'un coup), as a 

 whole, instantaneously ; it is not formed part by part, and at 

 different times. It is formed at once at the single individual 

 moment at which the conjunction of the male and female 

 elements takes place." 



It will be observed that M. Flourens uses 

 language which cannot be mistaken. For him, 

 the labours of Von Baer, of Rathke, of Coste, and 

 their contemporaries and successors in Germany, 

 France, and England, are non-existent : and, as 

 Darwin " imagina " natural selection, so Harvey 

 "imagina" that doctrine which gives him an even 

 greater claim to the veneration of posterity than 

 his better known discovery of the circulation of 

 the blood. 



Language such as that we have quoted is, ill 

 fact, so preposterous, so utterly incompatible with 



