110 SPECIES. 



man will never be permitted to tear the veil from this statue of 

 Isis. Let it suffice us to say that we are about to enter on 

 slippery ground, where we shall only find as few resting places 

 as the stones of a ford half destroyed by a torrent. And since 

 we shall only find here and there the fragile aid of one hypo- 

 thesis against so many others, in order to assist the conse- 

 quents of our reasonings, is it a reason for drawing back ? 

 We do not think so. 



Every period of a science has its own tendency ; at given 

 moments the efforts of all tend involuntarily towards one sole 

 end, one question absorbs all, and all partial solutions tend 

 to the same general solution. At the present day, the great 

 question in natural history is that of species; inquiries are 

 ardently pursued, and materials are produced from every side, 

 opinions are mooted, and objections raised. We have only 

 to call attention on this point to the works of Isidore Geoffroy, 

 Morton, Nott, Godron, Broca,* Darwin, Fee, etc. Jhe ques- 

 tion of spontaneous generation is but a phase of the same dis- 

 cussion, an episode in the work of the birth of time. 



Some people have made a sort of bugbear out of this word 

 spontaneous generation, or rather, spontaneous genesis. f And 

 yet, here is one of these truths to which, we think, we shall 

 be led by the observation of facts and by reasoning. The 

 great harm of examining into the question is to be strangely 

 mistaken as to its bearing, and inclined to restrict its limits. 

 It has, in fact, been said, that every day genital organs are 

 discovered in beings whom it was thought were reproduced 

 spontaneously. This is a specious argument to which Plutarch 

 has long ago done justice. A person, whom he brings forward 

 in one of his books, asks, ' ' Which had the first existence, the 

 egg or the hen ?" and concludes that " it was evidently the 

 hen." Even in treating lightly on this subject, in making it 

 a familiar conversation, the Greek physician was, however, not 

 mistaken about the importance of the matter. " So that," 

 answers one of the guests, "with this little question of the 



* [Ou the Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo, edited by C. Carter 

 Blake, F.G.S., F.A.S.L. EDITOR.] 



f Compare G. Pouchet, Precis d' Histologie Humaine, 5. 



