JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 67 
of inestimable value. The conclusion, he adds, seems irresistible 
that all own a common source and blood-relationship. 
In an earlier lecture by a medical man to the same society 
(which unfortunately has been mislaid) he points out that while man 
and the ape may be descended from a common ancestor, it was a 
popular error (not shared, however, by evolutionists) to imagine the 
former descended from any of the latter now known to us. Long 
before modern research established the fact that life originates in a 
single cell, whether in man, animal or plant, scientific men like an 
important section of the Church of England rejected as mythical the 
early chapters of Genesis, as the writer showed in a former paper. 
No doubt Darwin may not have sufficiently admitted his in- 
debtedness to the author of “The Vestiges of Creation,” as was 
remarked by a great American paleontologist ; that he profited by 
the suggestions appears certain. 
It is equally certain, asserts Dr. H. Drummond, that the mate- 
rials for his (man’s) body have been brought together from an 
unknown multitude of the lower forms of life. At the bottom of the 
scale is the Ameeba, a speck of protoplasmic jelly—headless, footless, 
armless. When it moves towards the microscopic particle it feeds 
upon, a portion of its body lengthens out, flows over and engulfs 
it. The blood of every man, woman, child and animal contains 
even yet this very lowest form of life we can conceive. How did it 
come there is the mystery. 
NOTE. 
The Ameba in the Pond.—Now see at the bottom slow-gliding 
lumps of jelly that thrust shapeless arms out where they will, and, 
grasping their prey with these chance limbs, wrap themselves round 
their food to get a meal; for they creep without feet, seize without 
hands, eat without mouths, and digest without stomachs.—HupDson 
& GOSSE ON “ ROTIFERA.” 
