UNSEEN LIFE OF OUR WORLD AND OF LIVING GROWTH. 123 



I am indebted to a friend of Mr. Jeffry's, Mr. Hannnond of 

 Canterbury. 



Will anyone venture to regard tliis living organism which we 

 see actually forming, or its organs of complex structure 

 appearing in regular order and performing their several 

 functions, as a lifeless machine, or as having been formed and 

 caused to act by physical and chemical agency alone ? 



In these beautiful little insect eggs, each with the food 

 supply for its minute germ during the whole period of 

 development, the evolution of a free and independent organism 

 with eyes, locomotor organs, having the power of selecting, 

 seizing, masticating, and digesting its proper food — with the 

 sense of sidrt and other senses ; and which ere longj will undero;o 

 anotlier change, and after a short time will reach a very 

 ■different and higher stag-e of existence. 



The structure and arrangement of the minute scales which 

 protect the wings and body of the moth are also worthy of 

 study, but the examination of one single scale is enougli to 

 •convince anyone who reasons on what he sees, of design, 

 prevision, infinite power wisdom and goodness, in this life world, 

 is ic possible to conceive, that each minute structural character 

 could be produced by means, other than by the fiat of 

 Almighty Power ? 



Yevf among modern writers and thinkers on the philosophic 

 and scientific aspects of living nature, appear to have formed a 

 •definite idea of what is to be discovered by studying the living 

 growing matter of a developing organism at a very early period 

 •of its embryonic life. Their ideas of evolution for the most 

 part have been founded upon the facts observed during the 

 later period of developmental progress, when many tissues, even 

 the bones are already distinct ; many investigators apparently 

 not being aware that the early changes in the evolutionary 

 process, are of great interest and importance. It is then, when 

 no structure has as yet appeared, that the particles of living 

 matter or bioplasts, of which at this time the embryo consists, 

 are arranging themselves and are preparing for the structure- 

 formation, and the development of organs which is about to 

 ■occur, and which had been designed and foreseen from the very 

 iirst. 



The unseen vital changes which precede all structure- 

 Iformation in living nature are the phenomena from the 

 knowledge of which alone can we hope to be able to gain a 

 ■correct idea of the wonderful vital processes which result in the 

 ^construction of tissues and organs, of which there is not a 



