95 Maddox, on Parasites of the Common Haddock. 
exist, rather carries forward the animal under some lower form 
of being (according to the admitted view, that the present 
form has to pass to a higher stage before reciprocal congrega- 
tion), provided it cannot, under its present circumstances, 
reach the higher mode of maturity than that it should perish. 
Singular, indeed, is the progressive series of stages in the 
“ alternation of generations ” or of “ germination,” “ aga- 
mogenesis,” when the offspring is to deviate, both by its 
appearance and its progeny, from its parents, and at last, 
after such transitional forms, arrive at that perfection when 
the result of reciprocal sexual impact is the genuine ovum of 
the specific type, — or that the young should be like to great- 
grandparents at one period, and at other stages have no 
relationship by similarity of external figure. Is this singu- 
larity not greater than hermaphroditic self-impregnation ? 
No one may have outwardly witnessed the act of self-impreg- 
nation, but, if the means of passage for the male influence 
exist internally, we have no more than an inward self- 
impression which exists in a reciprocal external condition in 
other creatures, and which can be effectually practised by 
artificial methods, as in fish-hatching. The question is, do 
we really know the import or exact nature of the organs we 
figure as existing in the interior of many small beings ? How 
various the terms employed, how questionable if strictly 
correct. We have our yelk-forming glands, our testes, our 
gemmarium, our ovaries, our oviducts, our excretory, urinary, 
or respiratory, or, in fact, any other apparatus that suits our 
views ; therefore we may err, however much we may strive in 
truth, “ for wisdom will always have a microscope in her 
hand ; ” still, when we look “ into the life of things,” we 
cannot limit the rules or restrict the powers impressed on 
certain animals by the Great Originator, or contrast His 
creative powers, however much they offend or oppose our 
accommodating hypotheses ; our ignorance is here the boun- 
dary, and certainly must not be a substitute for our imaginary 
knowledge. 
It is doubtful if we are even now able to state correctly all 
the generic relations of this genus, of the order Sterelmintha, 
family Trematoda, found in the cod, haddock, and whiting. 
I at first looked on these ovoid bodies as proceeds of diges- 
tion, retained to be expelled eventually, and this through the 
alteration produced in their appearance in various media in 
which they were examined, the same acting in a similar 
manner on the little quantity of granular material found in 
the middle pyriform sac of so^e ; but by using saliva I 
obtained a better mode of examining these bodies. 
