Part 6 (1/2)

II. I demand also, in opposition to the development hypothesis, the perpetuity of specific characters, from the moment when the respective creatures were called into being, till they cease to be. I a.s.sume that each organism which the Creator educed was stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distinguished it from everything else, however near or like. I a.s.sume that such character has been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species from species _now_, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are as distinct now as they were then. If any choose to maintain, as many do, that species were gradually brought to their present maturity from humbler forms,--whether by the force of appetency in individuals, or by progressive development in generations--he is welcome to his hypothesis, but I have nothing to do with it. These pages will not touch him.

I believe, however, there is a large preponderance of the men of science,[52] at least in this country, who will be at one with me here.

They acknowledge the almighty _fiat_ of G.o.d, as the energy which produced being; and they maintain that the specific character which He then stamped on his organic creation remains unchangeable.

VI.

LAWS.

”----[Greek: ton trochon tes geneseos].”--JAMES iii. 6.

The course of nature is a circle. I do not mean the _plan_ of nature; I am not speaking of a circular arrangement of species, genera, families, and cla.s.ses, as maintained by MacLeay, Swainson, and others. Their theories may be true, or they may be false; I decide nothing concerning them; I am not alluding to any _plan_ of nature, but to its _course_, _cursus_,--the way in which it _runs on_. This is a circle.

Here is in my garden a scarlet runner. It is a slender twining stem some three feet long, beset with leaves, with a growing bud at one end, and with the other inserted in the earth. What was it a month ago? A tiny shoot protruding from between two thick fleshy leaves scarcely raised above the ground. A month before that? The thick fleshy leaves were two oval cotyledons, closely appressed face to face, with the minute plumule between them, the whole enclosed in an unbroken, tightly-fitting, spotted, leathery coat. It was a bean, a seed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMINATION OF A SCARLET RUNNER.

_a._ The ripe bean, showing the hilum at *; _b._ The same bean, with one cotyledon removed, to show the plumule.

_c._ A similar bean, twenty-four hours after planting.

_d._ The same, on the sixth day after planting.

_e._ The same, on the twelfth day.

_f._ The same, on the fourteenth day.

N.B. From _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, the front cotyledon has been cut away, to show the progress of the plumule.]

Was this the commencement of its existence? O no! Six months earlier still it was snugly lying, with several others like itself, in a green fleshy pod, to the interior of which it was organically attached. A month before that, this same pod with its contents was the centre of a scarlet b.u.t.terfly-like flower, the bottom of its pistil, within which, if you had split it open, you would have discerned the tiny beans, whose history we are tracing backwards, each imbedded in the soft green tissue, but no bigger than the eye of a cambric needle.

But where was this flower? It was one of many that glowed on my garden wall all through last summer; each cl.u.s.ter springing as a bud from a slender twining stem, which was the exact counterpart of that with which we commenced this little life-history.

And this earlier stem,--what of it? It too had been a shoot, a pair of cotyledons with a plumule, a seed, an integral part of a carpel, which was a part of an earlier flower, that expanded from an earlier bud, that grew out of an earlier stem, that had been a still earlier seed, that had been--and backward, _ad infinitum_, for aught that I can perceive.

The course, then, of a scarlet runner is a circle, without beginning or end:--that is, I mean, without a natural, a normal beginning or end. For at what point of its history can you put your finger, and say, ”Here is the commencement of this organism, before which there is a blank; here it began to exist?” There is no such point; no stage which does not look back to a previous stage, on which _this_ stage is inevitably and absolutely dependent.

To some of my readers this may be rendered more clear by the accompanying diagram:----

[Ill.u.s.tration: legume--reed--cotyledons--shoot--stem--bud--flower--carpel]

[Ill.u.s.tration: theca--spore--prothallus--sporal frond--tuft--caudex--fertile frond--sorus]

See that magnificent tuft of Lady-fern on yonder bank, arching its exquisitely cut fronds so elegantly on every side. A few years ago this ample crown was but a single small frond, which you would probably not have recognised as that of a Lady-fern. Somewhat earlier than this, the plant was a minute flat green expansion (_prothallus_), of no definite outline, very much like a Liverwort. This had been previously a three-sided spore lying on the damp earth, whither it had been jerked by the rupture of a capsule (_theca_). For this spore, though so small as to be visible only by microscopic aid, had a previous history, which may be traced without difficulty. It was generated with hundreds more, in one of many capsules, which, were crowded together, beneath the oval bit of membrane, that covered one of the brown spots (_sori_), which were developed in the under surface of the fronds of an earlier Lady-fern.

That earlier individual had in turn pa.s.sed through the same stages of sporal frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, spore, theca, sorus, frond, prothallus, &c.--_ad infinitum_.

This sounding-winged Hawkmoth, which like a gigantic bee is buzzing around the jasmine in the deepening twilight, hovering ever and anon to probe the starry flowers that make the evening air almost palpable with fragrance,--this moth, what ”story of a life” can he tell? Nearly a year of existence he has spent as a helpless, almost motionless pupa, buried in the soft earth, from whence he has emerged but this evening. About a twelvemonth ago he was a great fat green caterpillar with an arching horn over his rump, working ever harder and harder at devouring poplar leaves, and growing ever fatter and fatter. But before that he had one day burst forth a little wriggling worm, from a globular egg glued to a leaf. Whence came the egg? It was developed within the ovary of a parent Hawkmoth, whose history is but an endless rotation of the same stages,--pupa, larva, egg, moth, pupa, larva, &c. &c.

[Ill.u.s.tration: larva--pupa--moth--egg]