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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEAV. 
or, more correctly speaking, from the human to the Divine, then we have 
here a clue to the mode in which a new species may have been brought into 
existence when circumstances required it. The type is here created in 
complete adaptation to external circumstances, and is then, by external 
conditions (the hereditary transmission of peculiarities, &c.), perpetuated 
as a race. 
We recommend to the earnest consideration of our author the question 
of “spontaneous variation.” 
Pasteur’s experiments can hardly be said to have given the coup 
de grace to the theory of “ spontaneous generation ,” * * * § for some 
months before the author delivered these lectures, Professor Wyman, 
of Boston, had published his experiments (which were a repetition 
of those of Pasteur), with precisely the opposite result at which the 
French chemist had arrived. And, moreover, if man succeeds in making a 
living protozoon or protophyte out of inorganic substances, — a possibility 
which, according to the author’s views, may be realised before fifty years 
have elapsed, — this “direct method ’’will be the strongest evidence that 
the Creator still continues to supply the earth’s surface with the germs of 
these lowly forms through the operations of nature ; for where are the 
necessary conditions the most likely to exist? — most certainly in nature, 
according to the author’s view of the Darwinian hypothesis. f 
Speaking cf Professor Wyman, we do not exactly see the applicability 
of the author’s reference to that gentleman’s anecdote of the “ Paint-root ” 
and the “ black pigs,” with regard to natural selection. J 
The argument is that the most minute cause will sometimes save a 
species from extermination, and a case of “ selection of colour ” is here 
mentioned ; namely, that in a locality where a certain root grows in 
Florida it has killed all the white pigs which have fed upon it (their hoofs 
cracking before death), whilst to the hlach pigs it is innocuous ; consequently 
black pigs only are to be found there. Are we to understand that the 
black colour of the pigs is the “minute circumstance” which saved their 
lives? We cannot read it otherwise ; yet it appears to us highly probable 
that the colour had nothing whatever to do with the phenomenon, but that 
it was only r an unimportant concomitant of some very important difference 
between the two kinds of pigs, of which the narrators (the inhabitants) 
were ignorant. There are certain substances which act as poisons if taken 
by the lower animals, but are harmless to higher forms of life. This we 
presume is due to some very important physiological difference between 
them ; and is it not merely an extension of the actual (not the alleged) 
cause that saved the black pigs ? 
Geological and Palaeontological Records .§ — The author tells us that in 
* As stated at p. 82. 
•f It must not be understood that from this we advocate the theory of 
“ spontaneous generation ; ” we are simply considering it from the author’s 
point of view. 
J Pages 180, 131. This is Mr. Darwin’s argument. 
§ Page 31, et seq. 
