eri 
1872.] 291 [Price. 
firmed by this statement of the author: ‘‘Bacterta, Torule, or other living 
things which may have been evolved de novo, when so evolved, multiply 
and reproduce just as freely as organisms that have been derived from 
parents,”’ p. 8. Now what living thing or creature in all nature ever 
has propagated, or can propagate its kind, except it has inherited that 
power from a living parent? From the beginning it has been that the 
grass, or herb, and fruit tree, ‘‘whose seed is in itself,” has yielded 
“fruit after his kind ;’’? and the living creatures have ‘brought forth 
abundantly after their kind,’’ and only so have they replenished the earth. 
Professor Tyndall’s article ‘‘ Dust and Disease,’’ is commended to the 
student who would learn how all pervading in the air of London are the 
seeds of life and of disease. (Fragments of Science, 277.)—Stating the 
result of experiments, he says, ‘‘The whole of the visible particles float- 
ing in the air of London rooms being thus proved to be of organic origin.”’ 
(p. 279,) ‘The air of our London rooms is loaded with this organic dust. ; 
nor is the country air free from its presence.”’ (p. 285.) And hence, no 
doubt, the ova were hatched by Dr. Bastian, or the germs made to grow. 
Sir William Thomson in his recent address, as President of the British 
Association, (Nature, August 8, 1871,) adds his authority to that of the 
opponents of spontaneous generation. ‘‘Science brings a vast mass of 
inductive evidence against this hypothesis of spontaneous generation, as 
you have heard from my predecessor, (Professor Huxley, ) in the presiden- 
tial chair. Careful enough scrutiny has, in every case, up to the present 
day, discovered life as antecedent to life. Dead matter cannot become 
living without coming under the influence of matter previously alive. 
This seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation.” 
* * ® “T confess to being deeply impressed by the evidence put before 
us by Professor Huxley, and I am ready to adopt, as an article of scien- 
tific faith, true through all space and all time, that life proceeds from 
life, and nothing but life.’?. Yet he, so true and wise in this induction, 
did not close that same address without falling into an egregious blunder, 
eliciting instant dissent and derisive laughter, followed by the universal 
condemnation of the scientific press. He too would dispense with a 
Creator, at least, on this planet, for he made the suggestion that the first 
life came to our world by a falling Aerolite, though it came fused by heat ! 
But that was only to transfer creation to another planet. This suggestion 
of course committed the learned President to the extremes of the evolu- 
tionary theory, was to say that from such life as could be borne hither by 
an aerolite all other life on earth has come and been developed upwards 
to man. Of this theory let us next speak, but first pausing to declare 
our faith that life came only from God, and by Him alone is ever protected 
and preserved. 
II. The theory of evolution as announced, seems to have been carried 
to an extravagant extreme. Its agencies are chiefly two: natural selec- 
tion, and sexual selection. The life that is best fitted to endure will live 
the longest ; and the weakest will soonest perish ; and that which man 
takes best care of and most propagates is most likely to live in perpetuity, 
