228 



PEOF. G. SIMS WOODHEAD^ M.D., 



words as these : " We are here face to face with a great mystery. 

 Does this process differ from life ? " Yet not long afterwards, in 

 commenting upon most careful experiments that had been made to 

 ascertain whether spontaneous generation were possible, he 

 declared with Tyndall that there was " an unbridgeable chasm 

 between living matter and dead " (including, of course, mineral sub- 

 stances in every form). And there are at least two deep distinctions 

 between crystals and all living organisms : — namely, that a crystal 

 thickens by laying matter on from without, whereas a cell thickens 

 by depositing matter within ; and that a set of crystals cannot split 

 up a chemical compound to take out thence any required ingredient, 

 whereas a set of cells making up a living animal or plant can do so^ 

 and, building up thereby one or more tiny facsimiles of itself, can 

 impart to them the same power, so that in the end they commonly 

 grow to the full size of their parent. Endosmose and reproduction of 

 species are properties of living creatures and not of mineral 

 combinations. 



To the instances given by Professor Woodhead of old pagan 

 belief in spontaneous generation, one may add Virgil's description, 

 in his Fourth Georgic, of the way in which to renew a stock of bees 

 discovered by the first great bee-master, Aristaeus of Arcadia. A 

 two-year old bullock is brought into a small tiled shed, with a 

 window open to each of the four winds ; and, while his mouth and 

 nostrils are held close he is slain by blows that crush and mash his 

 body without cutting his skin. His carcase is then left for some 

 days in the shed surrounded by sweet-scented boughs and herbs ; and 

 gradually " through the fermenting of its inward moisture, strange 

 forms of life arise, at first short of feet, then with good feet 

 and buzzing wings, then swarming together, and thicker and thicker 

 stemming the fleeting air, until at length, as a shower shed from the 

 summer clouds, they all at once burst forth " in search of their flowery 

 food. 



The cruelty and credulity of paganism are here combined. Men 

 shook both vices largely off at the establishment of Christianity and 

 again at the Reformation, which while it freed men's souls from fatal 

 error freed their understandings for deep and fearless searching into 

 nature. And this has led us to find it everywhere filled with the 

 tokens of design, and to prove that no being can spring into life 

 without the Creator's agency. 



