262 



EXPLANATIONS 



show that those animals have actually had sucn modified 



descendants as may have been attributed to them. I would 

 entreat the candid opponent of the transmutation theory 

 to review the subject in the improved light in which it 

 appears, with this most gratuitous assumption set aside. 



With regard to the origination of new life from inorgan- 

 ic elements, the Broomfield experiment would be quite 

 decisive, if any evidence could be admitted for what men 

 are unwilling to believe. The Edinburgh reviewer writes 

 two pages which appear to put the alleged fact much out 

 of countenance ; and yet it is true that ridicule, which 

 always proceeds upon assumption, forms their entire com- 

 position. He states that specimens of the insect were sent 

 to Paris, where they set a whole conclave of philosophers 

 a-laughing, because they were found to contain ova. It 

 did not occur to him that independent generation is what 

 the development theory presumes of every animal family 

 which may have ever had an origin otherwise than ex ovo. 

 Other specimens were sent to London, but there their fate 

 was sealed by their being fuund to be not a new species, 

 but one then abundant in the country. These circum- 

 stances, with a few empty jests, satisfy the critic that there 

 was no independent generation in the case. Against such 

 a conclusion, proceeding upon mere supposition, I adduce 

 careful experiment. During the last three years, Mr. 

 Weekes of Sandwich, has continued to subject solutions to 

 electric action, and invariably found insects produred in 

 these instances, while they as invariably failed to appear 

 where the electric action was not employed, but every 

 other condition fulfilled. The rigid care taken in these 

 experiments to exclude vitiating circumstances gives them 

 a high claim to notice, and I therefore present, as an ap- 

 pendix, two letters from Mr. Weekes upon the subject 

 They cannot fail to be read with interest, and the more so 

 as they exhibit a man pursuing the investigation of an im- 

 portant natural fact under the most discouraging circum- 

 stances. If this new presentment of the Acarus Crossii 

 shall still excite ridicule, I can only regret the mood of 

 mind from which that ridicule arises ; but the opposite 

 party must excuse my attaching no importance to a iy- 

 ihing besides fact and argument. These alleged phenom- 

 ena are open, like all others, to the test of counter-ex- 

 periment Let them be subjected to it in the most rigid man- 

 ner, ar»d set aside in the case of failure But to meet them 



