136 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



[June 



Specialized protoplasm of an individual form of life. And this 

 protoplasm has already been very active. It has digested or 

 assimilated at least a portion of a living cell from another insect, the 

 male of the same species, and then got itself mixed with the 

 protoplasm afforded by the mother butterfly, not in a confused 

 condition, as if half digested; but in a most exact order, at present 

 inscrutable to us, but on which depends whether the cell will produce 

 a male or a female butterfly and other characteristics. The monkey 

 and the elephant have been like that, in fact, there is no other way of 

 beginning animal life. Plants grow from seeds or buds, and there is 

 something very like budding in the lower animals, a long way below 

 butterflies. 



But, as a rule, the tiny cell with its jelly and spot, tliat is the 

 beginning common to all animal life. Suppose our butterfly egg 

 should make a mistake and hatch out a lobster. All that science can 

 say, is, that it never does make a mistake. Not that science can shew 

 the difl"erence, in the first stage, between the egg of a butterfly and 

 that of a lobster; structurally, under the highest powers of the 

 microscope, they are the same, though one may be a little bigger than 

 the other — I don't know if it be so. 



Someone may say, "What about the egg of a bird?" The first 

 stage has been passed through in the body of the bird long before the 

 egg is laid. There is not so much difference in size, at starting, 

 between the egg of a butterfly and that of the bird. 



Now, then, I want you to see our butterfly egg when it is .in 

 indistinguishable member of the world of life. It has this invisible, 

 inscrutable something, derived from its parents, that will keep it 

 true to its form; that will not let the egg of a Napi come out a RapcB. 

 This hereditarily derived property is still a mystery. There is no reason 

 why we should dislike to use this word "mystery"; nature has her 

 mysteries, whether we blindfold ourselves so as not to see them, or 

 whether we reverently try to find out, which is the better way. But 

 it has one thing more, the most astonishing object of contemplation, 

 except the Divine Being, that human thought can dwell upon. It is 

 an individual! It is not either, or both, of its parents. Kill them, 

 the egg may live; kill the egg, the parents may live. It is itself. Its 

 life may be taken, but all the skill in the world cannot prolong its life 

 for more than a year or two. It is as much an individual as is a man. 

 Mountains and seas and rocks and clouds have not what this little cell 

 of jelly has, periodicity and individuality. The prevalence of 

 individuals of the same kind is an amazing thought ; we speak of the 

 countless kinds of living things; there may be, probably, a greater 

 number of the same kind of animalcules in a summer pool of water, 

 than there is of kinds of plants and animals in all the world. 



'2 m 92 



