TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 97 



weighing fairly what belongs to it. No scientific study of the phenomena which 

 imply a reign of law could ever have issued in the discovery of the kingdom of 

 God. But neither can it issue in any discovery which contradicts the existence of 

 that kingdom ; nor can any mind in the light of the kingdom of God hesitate to 

 conclude that if such seeming contradictions arise there is implied the presence of 

 error either as to facts or as to conclusions from the facts." These are valuable words 

 and weighty testimonies. But in a matter of this importance one must not forbear to 



foint out what may seem to be wanting even in the dicta of such men as the two 

 have quoted. Neither of them have allowed the possibility of error attaching 

 itself to the utterances of more than one of the two parties in such issues as those 

 contemplated. Neither appears to have thought of the cases in which religious 

 men, if not theologians, have brought woe on the world because of the offences 

 they have with ill-considered enunciations created. And whilst fully sympathi- 

 zing with all that the Archbishop and Mr. Campbell have said, I must say that 

 they appear to me to have left something unsaid ; and this sometliing may be wrap- 

 ped up in the caution that there may be faults on both sides. But at any rate this 

 Section cannot be considered a fit place for the correction of en-ors save of the phy- 

 sical kind ; and all other considerations are for this week and in this place extra- 

 neous. In some other week or in some other place it will be, if it has not already 

 been, om* duty to give them our best attention. 



To come, now, to the kind of considerations which are the proper business of 

 Section D : let me say that for the discussion of Spontaneous Generation very 

 refined means of observation, and, besides these, very refined means of experimen- 

 tation are necessary. And I shall act in the spirit of the advice I have already 

 alluded to as given to the world by one of her greatest teachers, if I put before 

 you a simple but a yet imdecided question for the solution of which analogous 

 means of a far less delicate character would appear to be, but as yet have-not 

 proved themselves to be, sufiicient. Thus shall we come to see very plainly some 

 of the bearings, and a few of the difficulties, of the more difficult of the two 

 questions. What an uneducated person might acquiesce in hearing spoken of as 

 spontaneous generation, takes place very constantly under our very eyes, when a 

 plot of ground which has for many years, or even generations, been devoted to 

 carrying some particular vegetable growth, whether grass or trees, has that parti- 

 cular growth removed from it. When such a clearing is effected, we often see a 

 rich or even a rank vegetation of a kind previously not growing on the spot spring- 

 up upon it. The like phenomenon is often to be noted on other surfaces newly 

 exposed, as in railway-cuttings and other escarpments, and along the beds of canals 

 or streams, which are laid bare by the turning of the water out of its channel. 

 Fumitory, rocket, knotgrass or cowgrass {Polyc/onum aviculare), and other such 

 weeds, must often have been noted by every one of us here in England as coming into 

 and occupying such recently disturbed territories in force ; whilst in America the 

 desti-uction of a forest of one kind of wood, such as the oak or the chestnut, has 

 often been observed to be followed by an upgi-owth of young forest trees of quite 

 another kind, such as the white pine — albeit no such tree had been seen for genera- 

 tions growing near enough to the spot to make the transport of its seeds to the spot 

 seem a likely thing. In one case referred to by Mr. Marsh, ' Man and Natm-e,' 

 p. 289, the hickory. Can/a porcina, a kind of Avalnut, was remarked as succeeding 

 a displaced and destroyed plantation of the white pine. Now the advocates Si 

 spontaneous generation must not suspect me of hintmg that there is any question, 

 except in the minds of the grossly ignorant, of the operation of any such agency 

 as spontaneous generation here ; no one would suggest that the seeds of the Poly- 

 gonum aviculare, to say nothing of those of the hickory, were produced sponta- 

 neously ; but what I do say is, that the question of liow those seeds came there is 

 just the very analogue of the one wliich they and their opponents have to deal 

 with. And it is not definitely settled at this very moment. Let us glance at the 

 instructive historical parallel it offers. For the very gi-oss and palpable facts of 

 which I have just spoken there are two explanations offered in works of consider- 

 able authority. The one which has perhaps the greatest currency and commands 

 the largest amount of acceptance is that which, in the words of De Candolle, 

 regards la coiiche de terre vegetale (Tun pays comme im magasin de qraines, and sup- 



1870. 7 ^ 



