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THE VETERINARIAN, OCTOBER 1, 1862. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. —Cicero. 
ON SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 
The generation of a living organism has been for ages 
a perplexing question to philosophers. Few of them are 
contented to refer the production of life to the “ Great first 
Cause, least understood,” and most of them vainly theorise 
on it; while some, finding its depth to be beyond the length 
of their short plumb-line, refer it to chance or “a fortuitous 
concurrence of atoms.” Is it not strange that because man 
in his present imperfect state of existence is unable satis¬ 
factorily, by his reasoning powers merely, to account for the 
generation of even the lowest form of organization, he should 
not hesitate to ascribe it to accident or chance ; which has 
been defined as being the atheist's creed in a monosyllable ? 
He cannot see the order and design of the Creator's works, 
with whom small and great are terms unknown, for alike to 
Him are the movements of the insect's wing and the stately 
tread of the noble war-horse • the ponderous form of the 
leviathan of the mighty deep and the tiny polyp or micro¬ 
scopic infusoria— 
» 
“ To Him no high, no low, no rich, no poor ; 
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all.” 
Well has it been said, “we call it chance in ignorance of 
the cause.” We have been wont to say it is as easy to believe 
in the spontaneous generation of man as a monad, of the 
gnarled and knotted oak as the lowest conferva. If chance 
be the cause, how is it that each animal finds its most fitting 
habitat, high or low as it may be in the scale of existence ? 
How is it that each has some means or organs for repro¬ 
ducing its own kind. According to M. Balbiani, even 
infusoria, like other animals, propagate at certain epochs 
with the aid of elements characterising sexual generation. 
These originate in the interior of organs known as the 
