370 OBSERVATIONS ON SPONTANEOUS 



the doctrine. It is of no avail to say, that it is only the lowest 

 in the scale of organized beings that are so produced ; if the 

 vitality of an invertebrated being can be produced from dead 

 matter, what hinders the same matter from producing the vitality 

 of a vertebrated ? The various intestinal parasites are much 

 lower than the articulated invertebrata. h If, as Burmeister urges, 

 some in different sections of the invertebrata, — as intestinal 

 worms, mites, and insects, — possess an equivocal generation, 

 what puts a stop upon its progress, and prevents it proceeding 

 one step further, namely, to the lowest vertebrata? It is 

 needless to pursue the argument further, as we are on the 

 confines of that part of it where it is opposed by the strongest 

 reasoning, both moral and divine. 



Burmeister merely says of the Acari, that it is certain they 

 originate from equivocal generation ; and from the accordance 

 of the habits of the Acari and Pedlculi, he assumes that these 

 originate spontaneously also. Now, is it not a well known 

 fact, that if a person is in company with another that is infected 

 with the itch, if they entirely abstain from coming in contact 

 with each other, he will entirely escape the infection ? and, on 

 the contrary, if he makes use of any thing the other has been 

 laying hold on, or shakes hands, or otherwise comes in bodily 

 contact, he is equally certain to be infected. I ask any un- 

 prejudiced person, if that is not a pretty certain proof of the 

 modes in which the disease and parasites originate ? How can 

 any one tell, in the multitudinous affairs of life, whether every 

 person that he touches is not infected, or that every thing he 

 touches has not been contaminated by the use of it by an 

 infected person ? it is evidently impossible. If, therefore, we 

 have such probable evidence of their generation being accord- 

 ing to the regular course of nature, why should we adopt such 

 a difficult hypothesis (to say the best of it) as to give them a 

 spontaneous origin ? 



Burmeister furnishes another argument against himself in 

 the same section ; he states an instance of a woman at Bonn 



animalcules, and assert that they were only a fortuitous assemblage of organized 

 atoms moving in disorder. 



b Burmeister divides the animal kingdom into three groups — Gastrozoa, 

 Arthrozoa and Osteozoa ; the two first corresponding to the invertebrata, and the 

 last to the vertebrata of authors. The class Insects is placed the highest in the 

 second group, or limbed animals ; consequently the highest developed inverte- 

 brated, or next to the lowest vertebrated animals. 



