160 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 
erel were produced. The eelgrass of the river was 
supposed to yield eels in a similar fashion. The dead 
bodies of animals were supposed to turn into mag- 
gots. Such crude ideas of spontaneous generation 
are no longer possible. The whole science of bacteri- 
ology absolutely presupposes the impossibility of spon- 
taneous generation in the flasks and test tubes of the 
laboratory. One or two men of otherwise good stand- 
ing in science still maintain that they are getting new 
life in their own test tubes, but they fail utterly to 
persuade the scientific world. I think it is a fair state- 
ment of the position of science to-day to say that there 
is no evidence whatever of spontaneous generation, 
excepting the presence of life upon the globe. 
Not all has been said, however, on this question. 
The chemist is learning in the laboratory to produce 
many substances which, until very recent times, were 
produced only in the bodies of animals or plants. Dye- 
stuffs were originally gotten almost entirely from ani- 
mal or plant material. At present the great majority 
of them are made in the laboratory, and in not a few 
cases they not only imitate the color of the older ma- 
terial, but actually have identically the same compo- 
sition and constitution. The laboratory-made mate- 
rial is exactly like that made by the animals or the 
plants. 
The same is true with regard to a large number of 
