brought forth of itself all natural bodies, this law of nature has, at least within 

 the compass of scientific history, ceased to manifest itself, all apparent ex- 

 ceptions being not only disputed, but at the best mere isolated contradic- 

 tions to the whole tenor of knowledge, and in large part, perhaps, subjec- 

 tive,! Oken can answer only by saying, that the relations of things have 

 been altered already as much as they can be : weil sie sich schon so viel 

 geandert haben, als sie konnten, (Naturgesch. v. 2, p. 255), which is 

 not only too unsatisfactory, but altogether too stale, it being precisely 

 Lucretius's way of attempting to escape the difficulty, which eighteen 

 centuries ought to have improved upon, at least. 



" Jamque adeo affecta est actas; effaetaque tellus 

 Vix animalia parva creat, quse cuncta creavit 



Sed quia finem aliquam pariendi debet habere 

 Destitit. ut raulier spatio defessa vetusto." 



(Lucr. lib. ii. 1150, v. 825.) 



And we may be well content, for our parts, to say, with the cardinal de 

 Polignac's Anti-Lucretius 2 : 



"Sed quis eos foetus ipsa in tellure creavit? 

 Vas est, non opifex. Hie te tua fabula fallit 

 Etjugulat. - '' '*# * .-''^'''U !v * s*'n 

 Impietas hue usque virum insanire coegit! 

 Numine destructo, Fortume tradidit amens 

 Numinis officium ! Quarn prudens quamque benigna 

 Haec Fortuna fuit! 'Quae munificentia major, 

 Aut quae cura magis materna in rebus alendis! 

 Qui talern agnoscit casum, non indiget ullo 

 Numinis auxilio: quin casum baud esse fatetur, 

 Invitusque DEUM commentis ponit in ipsis." 



CAMBRIDGE, 1st May, 1845. 



* Fries has some observations upon this, which, as coming from a botanist 

 of all others most familiar with the obscure forms of vegetation, wherein nature 

 is supposed by the theorists itself to generate, are worthy of attention. "It 

 has happened," he says, "with Botany, as with the geography of the ancients, 

 that to unknown regions, various phenomena, irreconcilable with the laws of 

 nature, have been attributed, which, with advance of knowledge, have been 

 transferred to regions yet beyond. So Cornari's theory of the transmutation of 

 phanerogamous plants, and their equivocal generation, is driven now to the cryp- 

 togamous tribes. If there be among the lowest of these tribes some facts which 

 seem to prove original generation in their case, it is, on the other hand, most 

 certain that many of the gravest enigmas of this sort have, with fuller knowledge 

 of the matter, vanished: and the plants themselves even turned out to be no 

 plants, but only mere residua or exanthemata of vegetation. For myself, I will 

 here testify, that I have found the propagation of the lowest plants, in so far as 

 I have understood it, equally normal and regular as that of the higher." Lich- 

 enographia, p. Iv. 



2 Anti-Lucr. lib. vii. 118. 



