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language, and I rather fancy that some mistake has been made by the 
author. Mr. Wheatley says, “ To my mind, the experiments of M. Pasteur 
most conclusively negatived those of Mr. Crosse and Mr. Weeks, who found 
a species of acarus appear in solutions of nitrate of copper, silicate of potash, 
and ferro-cyanate of potassium — on which a powerful battery was brought to 
bear. A pretence of creative power was thereupon sought to be established. 
May there not be an attempt to prove rather too much here ? Three distinct 
solutions, acted upon by electricity, each disengaged the same form of life. 
If the forces employed, the solutions used, and the surrounding conditions 
are all precisely the same, to the greatest possible exactitude, it is quite com- 
prehensible how the same creature should appear, supposing that any could. 
But it is surely incredible that by the employment of various media the same 
animal appeared, unless on the supposition of the introduction of germs from 
outside.” So far as my memory serves me, it never was suggested, either by 
Mr. Crosse or Mr. Weeks, that the acarus formed in one case was the same as 
that formed in the other. That it was a similar kind of animal life is true, but 
it never was said that it was exactly the same. The argument appears to me 
to be useless, unless we can insert another word or two, and read it 
that Mr. Weeks found the same species of acarus in solutions of nitrate 
of copper which he found in the other solutions, which I do not think was 
the case. And now with regard to the main argument of the paper, so far as 
the Darwinian theory is concerned, and the line of thought laid down here, it 
follows that if there be a series, or if Mr. Darwin supposed that there was a 
series, by means of which man has been produced from the lowest forms of 
animal life, then the series which has produced him is not simply a “ sport,” 
as it is called, but a regular link in what I might almost call a system of 
scientific gradation that may be in existence still on the earth ; and 
wherever there are links wanting we might hope to be able to trace the 
whole series complete. But I never met any one who was prepared to say 
that the series could be traced, distinct and complete, in any manner. 
You may get one or two very remarkable similarities here and there, by 
means of which you leap a very long way in the dark. Beyond that, if the 
argument just hinted at is good, which I think there can be no doubt about, 
then we have a right to suppose that the “ sport ” should perfect itself in such 
a form as that we should find a whole series perfectly complete from the 
lowest form up to man. If we follow out the same thought in a divergent 
direction, we should find also an immense number of series rising from the 
lowest form up to the highest, but in very different positions. We do 
not find all molluscs the same, for instance. If I find my parentage in an 
oyster, it follows that I do not claim my origin from an anemone. If I come 
through the oyster, I should like to see some fresh series derived through the 
anemone, and that series completely carried on from the begimiing, so that I 
may have the whole chain with all its divergences rising from the lowest up 
to the highest form, in all the dignity, beauty, and perfection of life. I think 
Mr. Wheatley has been a little troubled with this, which it was almost 
impossible for him to escape from, — I mean the two different lives of plants 
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