UNSEEN LIFE OF OUR WORLD AND OF LIVING GROWTH. 125 



of my scientific contemporaries in this matter, and cannot help 

 remarking, that about the middle of the last century there 

 seems to have been a determination on the part of many 

 authorities to do their utmost to raise animal and to degrade 

 man. Was not man called a machine, and was it not said, that 

 all his actions were mechanical ? The learned philosophers of 

 that day did not insult the ape by calling it a machine, but only 

 their contemporary equal, man. There is not one part, or 

 particle of anything living that in reason can be considered to 

 be a machine. Every living particle grows. But what machine 

 — what mechanism is there which has not been designed, and its 

 several parts constructed, by man ? 



Think of the preparations required for the construction of 

 any machine — the forming and fitting together of its several 

 parts ; and then tliink of the soft structureless living matter, 

 and of the unseen preparatory stages, througli which every 

 living organism and all structures in living nature, must pass 

 through, during their period of development and growth, as they 

 gradually advance towards the short evanescent stage of 

 completeness and maturity, which must be followed by death — 

 most remarkable in insect life ; where in fact we meet with 

 three distinct phases of being, abruptly marked off from each 

 other, but in each of which, special developmental changes, 

 including the formation of complex tissues and organs, 

 characterize grub or larva, chrysalis, and the complete, often 

 winged, imago. Were it not for correct observation, the 

 organism representing each of the three phases of existence, 

 would have been regarded as a distinct creature, the latest 

 phase, marking the highest and most advanced developmental 

 form, as shown by its elaborate^ and perfectly acting, tissues 

 and organs, all foreseen from the first, although to this last 

 stage, the nearest to perfection, death will soon succeed, and in 

 some instances, even in a few hours. 



In the vertebrata, long preliminary periods of unseen changes 

 pass, before there is a vestige of structure-formation, during 

 which the minute bioplasts are growing and grouping them- 

 selves according to the size and character of the structure 

 designed, and as if it had lieen foreseen from the earliest 

 moment of the life of the germ, or before that. 



Living nature, it might be said, everyicliere affords evidence 

 of preparation for a future — promise of a living nature which is 

 to be. And may not death itself be looked upon as a natural 

 and necessary preparation for new life which is about to 

 succeed ? Just as in autumn and winter, do we not see 



