Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

We have no charge of impiety to bring against the _Vestiges_. Final causes, or to express ourselves more intelligibly, a _purpose_ in creation, is nowhere impugned. The Deity is not degraded by impersonification in the form and frailties of mortality, but everywhere the author reverently bows to that august and unsearchable name, acknowledges the grand and benevolent design--the admirable adaptation of every created thing to its end and place, and finally concludes in a strain of grateful and exulting Optimism, that we confess we have not fully arrived at--namely, that everything "is very good." (p. 387.) From this impression we have only one constructive drawback to notice in the author's mechanical but fanciful constitution of the universe, by which a special Providence in the government of the world seems to be dispensed with, and the Almighty is placed in the sinecure position of the Grand Elector of the Abbe SIEYES, with nothing to do. But no divine attribute is abscinded--no glory of Omnipotence dimmed--whether it pleases him to rule by direct interpositions of power, or his own pre-ordained eternal laws.

Still less can we detect in the speculative inquiries of the _Vestiges_ conclusions hostile to the moral and social interests of the community. Men are formed to be what they are; vice and crime are the fruits of malorganization, and malorganization is the result of the unfavourable conditions in which the subject of it has been placed, prior or subsequent to birth. These are the author's leading metaphysical inculcations. They impose grave duties upon individuals and upon society, rightly understood and applied, but we cannot discern a hurtful tendency in them. They are useful knowledge, knowledge that it would be well for parents and rulers to master, by showing the importance of education, of favourable circumstances, and of good moral and physical training, for rearing happy, well-ordered, and virtuous members of the community. Supreme in intelligence, man, we firmly believe, is not less supremely blessed in the means of felicity, provided his real nature and position in the scheme of creation were understood, recognised, and carried out. He has his place, his office, and his destiny; he is no enigma but as an individual; "in the mass," as the author emphatically remarks, "he is a mathematical problem." His conduct is uniform and consistent; the result of known and ascertainable causes--causes calculable and predicable in their consequences, as the statistics of crime have incontestibly established.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON THE VESTIGES.

The heavens are wonderful, and the earth is wonderful, and man, who, by force of intellect, has sought to comprehend the immensity of one and unravel the formation of the other, is hardly less wonderful than either. Still the great mystery remains unriddled; our researches have brought us no nearer the beginning, and the first cause of all continues unapproachable and undefinable as ever. Instead of explaining physical creation, we begin with it; we take the existence of matter for granted, and its attributes for granted, and forthwith begin to fabricate a universe, without first ascertaining whence was matter, or whence the laws by which it is impressed, and has been governed in its evolutions.

Nature's greatest phenomena are the celestial spaces and the bodies that fill them; our own planet and its living occupants. Upon each of these, their commencement and subsequent vicissitudes, the _Vestiges of Creation_ have propounded an hypothesis, but one mystery is only sought to be explained by another still more mysterious. For the fiat of a Creator chemical affinities and mechanical laws have been substituted, but aided by these the author has failed to produce a world such as we find it. Hence we are again driven upon the old tradition, the old sacred authority, that the world was created out of nothing; and this is as easy to comprehend as the solution of the _Vestiges_, that it sprang from that which is certainly next to nothing--a heated fog or universal fire-mist.

When the author deals with the facts of science he interests and instructs, but when he speculates he only amuses or perplexes, without advancing knowledge. His terse and luminous description of the astral firmament deeply impresses with the might and the magnitude of the vast design; but when he attempts to account for the elimination of suns and worlds, their formation and arrangement, we are struck by the puerile folly of his conjectural presumptions.

Descending from this august and glittering canopy to our own planet, we are not less astonished by the exhibition of the extraordinary revolutions it has undergone. Geology is the true historian of the earth. Conducted by the lights it affords, we see an eternity of ages has rolled before us; we discover a series of worlds rising through the depths of ocean from the central sphere of heat, amidst boiling floods and volcanic fires, each new platform of existence, that countless periods of time had been requisite to form, peopled with its own congenial forms of organic life, mostly commencing with the simpler, and ascending by almost imperceptible gradations to the higher and more complex structures of being. We are struck by the correspondence, by the _pari passu_ development and formation of the earth's crust and organic existences, and we are apt hastily to conclude that a relation has subsisted between them, that contemporary changes have been cause and effect, and that the improvement of the earth produced the correlative improvement in animals and plants.

This forms the author's second questionable hypothesis; it is plausible, but false--repugnant to fact and correct observation. We have no credible evidence that species have changed, or are changeable by the utmost efforts of art or favouring conditions; all we can effect is to improve them within definite limits, but not alter their characteristic types; and we have certain proof that neither man nor the animal nearly next to him in organization, has changed either in habits, disposition, form, or osseus structure during the last 3,000 years. Resemblance is no proof of identity; and hence, though species run into each other by almost inappreciable shades of difference, it is no proof that they are derivative, or other than isolated and self-dependent creations. That they are such, and shall continue such, seems a fixed canon of Nature, who, apparently, has prescribed to each its circle of amendment and range, that like shall beget like--that nought organic shall exist without ancestral germ--and that the variety of species which constitutes the beauty and order of nature shall by no chance, contrivance, or mingling of races, be confounded.

Geological facts are in favour of this conclusion. They attest the appearance of new species, not their improvement. In each species a gradation of improvement, approximating from a lower to the next higher organism, is not perceptible; but each seems to have been made perfect at first, and most suited to the co-existent state of the earth. The earliest reptiles were not reptiles of inferior structure; nor the earliest fishes, birds, or beasts. They were adapted, as we now find them, to their precise sphere of existence, without progressive aptitude, preparatory to a higher and translated condition of being. Geology rather points to the extinction and degeneracy of species than their improvement; and the fossils of the old red sandstone, and of the carboniferous formation, attest a loftier and more magnificent creation of both marine and land products than any now subsisting.

For these and other reasons before adduced, we dismiss the hypothesis of animal transmutation as unproved and untenable. It pleases and satisfies superficial views, but confronted with the facts of nature, it vanishes like a baseless vision. Man is _sui generis_, sole and exclusive in organization, without pre-existing type or affinity to other species; and his alleged recent metamorphosis from a monkey, and his first and far more distant one from a snail or a tadpole, are paradoxes only worthy of idle debating clubs.

Having attempted to unfold the progression of species by his law of development, the author next essays to explain the commencement of the vital principle itself. But here, too, he must have a beginning, and his "organic globule" answers a similar purpose, in deducing the mystery of life, as his nuclei in the "nebular hypothesis." In both the perplexity and real difficulty is not solved or mastered, but evaded. But we have already remarked on the point, and shall only observe that when the author can elicit _thought_ from inorganic matter, either by chemistry or galvanism, we shall think he has made a step in creation. Until then he does not advance, only deceives himself and readers by verbal subtleties and baseless suppositions.

Apart from its hypotheses, the _Vestiges_ form a valuable and interesting work. It is the most complete, elaborate, and--with all its faults of detail, logic, and inference--the most scientific expositor of universal nature yet offered to the world. But its hypotheses are unwarranted, not inductively derived, and can have no hold on men of science, supported as they mostly are by fanciful analogies, facts misunderstood or misstated, and illustrations selected without discrimination or applicability. Theories do sometimes conduce to the discovery of truth, but are often obstructive; occupy the mind, like theological controversy, without advancing science; and are viewed with the same aversion by the philosopher that the political abstractions tendered to the multitude by the demagogue are viewed by the patriotic legislator.

The work, however, will live, and deserves to live. The temple of nature has been looked into, not profoundly, perhaps, nor always successfully; but in a fearless spirit, and with a highly-accomplished mind. Had the divine COSMOS been more fully dwelt upon and depicted--had the harmony, beauty, and beneficence of creation been more fully and exclusively displayed--we should have been more gratified; but we are thankful, in the main, for what we have received. An impulse has been given to popular inquiry, and a vast field for discussion opened, from which we can prospectively discern neither less love for man, nor reverence for God.

Who the author is we have no certain knowledge. It is not, we suspect, Lord KING, nor Lord THURLOW, nor Lady BYRON; but it may be the author of the _Essay on the Formation of Opinions_, and of the _Principle of Representation_. Mr. BAILEY, of Sheffield, though little known, possesses the fine reasoning powers, intellectual grasp, independence of research, abstract analysis, and attic style, that would qualify him to produce the _Vestiges of Creation_, though we never heard that he is a great natural philosopher. But, as just hinted, deep science is not evinced by the _Vestiges_, only an able, systematic, and tasteful arrangement of its distant and recent advances.

"EXPLANATIONS:"

A SEQUEL TO THE

"VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION."

(_From the_ ATLAS _of December 20, 1845._)

So many strong objections had been arrayed against the _Vestiges of Creation_, that the author was called upon to elucidate and reinforce his argument, or abandon the ground he had taken up. The more candid and equitable of his judges--those who were disposed to try him upon the merits, and independently test the claims of his inquiry, as in fairness it ought to be, as strictly a scientific speculation, regardless of any constructive bearings it might have on current opinions or prejudices--could not arrive at any more favourable conclusion than that he had failed to establish his hypotheses. Indeed this was the only verdict that could be safely delivered in. The impugners of the work were in the same helpless predicament as its author, who had, however, more venturously presumed to unravel unsearchable mysteries, concerning which, in the existing state of science, men can only conjecture, wonder, and adore, utterly unable to affirm or deny aught respecting them. What, for instance, with the remotest semblance of certainty, can be predicated of the stellar orbs? Is it not idle almost to speculate on the impenetrable secret of their origin when their very existence is undefinable--when their end, their glittering discs, and all but immeasurable distances are wholly unapproachable? Nor hardly less beyond our grasp is the commencement of organic existences. We do pride ourselves on recent advances to the sources of entity; we tear up the dead, we torture the living, and sedulously chronicle every beat of the heart and vibration of the brain to slake an insatiable curiosity, yet how unsatisfactory our reach towards the hidden springs of life--how limited our attainments, when the creation of a single blade of grass, the humblest worm, a poor beetle, or gadfly, would baffle the utmost structural skill of the greatest philosopher! Into the fathomless depths of our own globe we have also essayed to penetrate. Poor beings! of three score and ten, whose utmost historical span extends only to some thousands of years, have sought to trammel up the terrene vicissitudes of millions of ages anterior to their own existence! Does not this savour of a vain research, or of a laudable thirst for knowledge?

Over all these dark and solemn inscrutabilities, however, the _Vestiges_ undertook to throw a glare of light, to reveal their beginning, progression, order, relations, and law of development. Although daring in aim, the attempt was not to be wholly deprecated. While religious freedom had been secured, philosophy had become timid, official, and timeserving; retentive as FONTENELLE of the truths within its grasp, and fearful to give utterance to aught that might disturb the stillness of the temple, the lecture-room, or fashionable auditory. Modern teachers had been used so long to the Baconian go-cart, that they had become as apprehensive of losing the inductive clue as the PALINURUSES of old of the sight of the directing shore. But the time had arrived when it seemed expedient to relax the strictness of the investigative rule, and afford scope for a more systematic, if not speculative research. Science had made great acquisitions, and it seemed desirable, if only for experiment sake, to see what kind of FRANKENSTEIN would result from the architectural union of her scattered limbs. This formed the scope of the _Vestiges of Creation_; novelties were not propounded, only a portentous skeleton raised from the truths physical astronomy, geology, chemistry, physiology, and natural history had established. Does the author recoil from his work? No; these _Explanations_ attest that he is steadfast in the worship of the idol of his brain. He retracts nothing, he re-asserts, elucidates, and often dexterously turns the weapons of the most formidable and orthodox of his adversaries against them, by showing from their writings that they had, in detail at least, acquiesced in the truths that they now, in a generalised form, seek to controvert and repudiate. So much adroitness and pertinacity in the author can hardly fail to provoke resistance, if not asperity, despite of the imperturbable temper in which he maintains the combat. The learned have been disturbed in their daily routine, by the discharge from an unknown hand, of a massive pyrites, that has diffused as much consternation among the herd of modish elocutionists, college tutors, and chimpanzee professors, as Jove's ligneous projectile among the lieges of the standing pool. For this commotion we have, on a former occasion, conceded that there existed valid reasons, and we hasten to see the way in which they have been met in the rejoinder before us; contenting ourselves, as we needs must, by briefly noticing some of the salient points of the controversy.

First of the Nebular Hypothesis. The chief objection to this theory is, that the existence of nebulous matter in the heavens is disproved by the discoveries made by the telescope of the Earl of ROSSE. By the reach of this wondrous tube, masses of light, rendered apparently nebulous by their vast distance, have been resolved into clusters of stars, and thence the assumption seemed unwarrantable that any luminous matter, different from the solid bodies composing planetary systems existed in the heavenly spaces. But to this the author replies, that there are two classes of nebulæ--one resolvable into constellations--another comparatively near, that remains unaffected by telescopic power, and that until this last description can be separated, the nebular hypothesis is not disproved. It is thus brought to an issue of facts, both as to the existence of nebulæ of this latter kind, and the optical power to resolve them into distinct stars.

But the author can hardly claim this negative success in grappling with a second objection--namely, his assumed origin of _rotatory motion_. According to him, a confluence of atoms round a spherical centre of attraction, would cause the agglomerated mass to revolve upon its axis in the manner of our earth. This was denied by everybody the least acquainted with the laws of motion; and thus did one of his imaginary solutions of a great phenomenon of the universe fall dead to the ground. This he now seems to concede, but in a sentence unintelligible to us, in which an undoubted physical law is spoken of as only an _abstract truth_ (p. 20). He obviously still clings to his first mistaken inference, and calls to his aid Professor NICHOL, whom he has also pressed into his service to help him over the last-mentioned difficulty by the Professor's affirmation of a diversity of nebulous clusters. But the Professor does not commit himself to the extent of the author; his aqueous whirlpool is cited from HERSCHEL, only in illustration, and correctly said to be produced by the unequal force of convergence of a fluid to a common centre. But the author's nuclei, disposed in his notable "fire-mist," did not act with unequal force on the ambient vapour, and whose central convergence in consequence, would not produce rotation or motion of any kind. This was the real matter in question, the author was taken up on his own premises, and the results he assumed to follow from them proved to be inconsistent with the unquestionable laws of gravitating matter.

He has gone over the geological portion of his subject with much care, but if competent, it would be impossible within our narrow limits to accompany him; nor could the discussion be made either interesting or intelligible except to the scientific, who have devoted attention to an extremely curious, but still obscure and unsettled field of investigation. He has elaborately cleared up many points, and successfully, we think, answered some weighty objections, but we are not yet converts to his theory of organic development. One passage we shall extract; after adverting to the facts established by powerful evidence, that during the long term of the earth's existence, strata of various thickness were deposited in seas composed of matter worn away from the previous rocks; that these strata by volcanic agency were raised into continents, or projected into mountain chains, and that sea and land have been constantly interchanging conditions. He continues:--

"The remains and traces of plants and animals found in the
succession of strata show that, while these operations were going
on, the earth gradually became the theatre of organic being, simple
forms appearing first, and more complicated afterwards. _A time
when there was no life_ is first seen. We then _see life begin, and
go on_; but whole ages elapsed before man came to crown the work of
nature. This is a wonderful revelation to have come upon the men of
our time, and one which the philosophers of the days of Newton
could never have expected to be vouchsafed. The great fact
established by it is, that the organic creation, as we now see it,
was not placed upon the earth at once; it observed a PROGRESS. Now
we can _imagine_ the Deity calling a young plant or animal into
existence instantaneously; but we see that he does not usually do
so. The young plant and also the young animal go through a series
of conditions, advancing them from a mere germ to the fully
developed repetition of the respective parental forms. So, also, we
can _imagine_ Divine power evoking a whole creation into being by
one word; but we find that such had not been his mode of working in
that instance, for geology fully proves that organic creation
passed through a series of stages before the highest vegetable and
animal forms appeared. Here we have the first hint of organic
creation having arisen in the manner of natural order. The analogy
does not prove identity of causes, but it surely points very
broadly to natural order or law having been the mode of procedure
in both instances."

To the allusion in the last sentence there can be no demur; that there is "natural order or law" in creation who will contest? But it is the author's law and the author's order that are in dispute--his transmutation of species, the higher classes emerging from and partly annihilating the lower, under meliorated conditions of being. That the simpler form of organic life should first appear; that remains of invertebrated animals should be first found; then, with these, fish, being the lowest of the vertebrated; next, reptiles and birds, which occupy higher grades; and finally, along with the rest, mammifers, the highest of all--all this appears natural enough. _How could it be otherwise?_ When the earth was a slimy bed, what but the lowest forms of life--the mollusca, and other soft animals, without bony structure--could possibly live in or occupy it? During the carboniferous era, when the earth was enveloped in an atmosphere of hydrogen, vegetation might thrive; but man, and animals like him, dependent on vital air, could not exist; nor are remains of them found in this epoch of the globe's vicissitudes. All this is comprehensible. But the perplexing inquiry is, whence did the successive grades of animals emerge? That they could not contemporaneously exist; when the whole earth was a shoreless sea, and that animals could not live is certain; but were they created in succession by the Divine fiat, or did they emerge, as our author supposes and elaborately tries to prove, from the humblest primitive forms, by an inscrutable law of progression--evidenced, he contends, by geological facts--though by some his facts are disputed--and certainly not confirmed by any animal changes observable within the limits of human experience?

There is another alternative offers, which would dispense both with the author's hypothesis and the need of successive organic creations by a special Providence. Is it a geological fact, since life began, that the earth has _simultaneously_ undergone throughout its entire surface the revolutions assigned to it? May it not always, from that period, have consisted, as it now does, of water and dry land, alternately changing their sites, but always apart, and allowing of the contemporary existence on some portion of its surface of all the varieties of tribes ever found upon it? The fossiliferous rocks that formed the primeval sea-beds could only be deposited by the abrasion from the anterior and higher rocks. It has always appeared to us that this conjecture is worthy of consideration, and, if found tenable, would reconcile many perplexities.

Upon subjects so obscure, and to which the human intellect has been only recently directed, it is not surprising that men of science have not arrived at uniformity of conclusion. Unable to reconcile phenomena with positive knowledge, there are names of no mean repute who would reserve certain domains of creation as the fields of special interventions. To this class Dr. WHEWELL appears to belong, who assumes that "events not included in the _course of nature_ have formerly taken place." In the same way Professor SEDGWICK, to account for the appearance of certain animals, says, "They were not called into being by any law of nature, but by a power above nature." He adds, "they were created by the hand of GOD, and adapted to the conditions of the period." To this the author of the _Vestiges_ assents, with the explanation (p. 134) that their existence was not the result of a "special exertion of power to meet special conditions," but of an antecedent and primitive law of development suited to the new exigencies, and emanating from the Creator. This, he contends, does not lower our estimate of the Divine character; and, in proof, cites Dr. DODDRIDGE, who cannot be suspected of irreverence. "When we assert," says the pious and amiable author, "a perpetual Divine agency, we readily acknowledge that matters are so contrived as not to need a Divine interposition in a different manner from that in which it had been constantly exerted. And it must be evident that an unremitting energy, displayed in such circumstances, _greatly exalts our idea of God, instead of depressing it_; and, therefore, by the way, is so much more likely to be true." Against constructive inferences it is urged, in the _Explanations_--

"As to results which may flow from any particular view which reason
may show as the best supported, I must firmly protest against any
assumed title in an opponent to pronounce what these are. The first
object is to ascertain truth. No truth can be derogatory to the
presumed fountain of all truth. The derogation must lie in the
erroneous construction which a weak human creature puts upon the
truth. And practically it is the true infidel state of mind which
prompts apprehension regarding any fact of nature, or any
conclusion of sound argument."

The writer then quotes Sir JOHN HERSCHELL as having some years ago announced views strictly conformable to those subsequently taken of organic creation in the _Vestiges_:--

"'For my part,' says Sir John, 'I cannot but think it an inadequate
conception of the Creator, to assume it as granted that his
combinations are exhausted upon any one of the theatres of their
former exercise, though, in this, as in all his other works, we are
led, by _all analogy_, to suppose that he operates through a series
of intermediate causes, and that, in consequence, _the origination
of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be
found to be a natural, in contradistinction to a miraculous
process_,--although we perceive no indications of any process
actually in progress which is likely to issue in such a result. In
his address to the British Association at Cambridge, (1845), he
said with respect to the author's hypothesis of the first step of
organic creation--'The transition from an inanimate crystal to a
globule capable of such endless organic and intellectual
development, is as great a step--as unexplained a one--as
unintelligible to us--and in any sense of the word as _miraculous_,
as the immediate creation and introduction upon earth, of every
species and every individual would be!'"

The Rev. Dr. PYE SMITH is next adduced:--

"'Our most deeply investigated views of the Divine Government,'
says he, 'lead to the conviction that it is exercised in the way of
_order_, or what we usually call _law_. God reigns according to
immutable principles, that is _by law_, in _every part of his
kingdom--the mechanical, the intellectual, and the moral_; and it
appears to be most clearly a position arising out of that fact,
that _a comprehensive germ which shall necessarily evolve all
future developments_, down to the minutest atomic movements, is a
more suitable attribution to the Deity, than the idea of a
necessity for irregular interferences.'"

Lastly, the reviewer of the _Vestiges_ in _Blackwood's Magazine_, who is understood to be a naturalist of distinguished ability, expresses himself in an equally decided manner:--

"To reduce to a system the acts of creation, or the development of
the several forms of animal life, no more impeaches the authorship
of creation, than to trace the laws by which the world is upheld,
and its phenomena perpetually renewed. The presumption naturally
rises in the mind, that the same Great Being would adopt the same
mode of action in both cases.... To a mind accustomed, as is every
educated mind, to regard the operations of Deity as essentially
differing from the limited, sudden, evanescent impulses of a human
agent, it is distressing to be compelled to picture to itself, the
power of God as put forth _in any other manner than in those slow,
mysterious, universal laws, which have so plainly an eternity to
work in;_ it pains the imagination to be obliged to assimilate
those operations, for a moment, to the brief energy of a human
will, or the manipulations of a human hand.... No, there is nothing
atheistic, nothing irreligious, in the attempt to conceive
creation, as well as reproduction, carried on by universal laws."

We have dwelt so much upon this matter because it is one in which popular feelings are likely to be most deeply interested. We shall give the author, too, the benefit of his _Explanations_ on another point, elucidating his former statement of the transmutation of a crop of oats into a crop of rye:--

"'At the request,' says Dr. Lindley, 'of the Marquis of Bristol,
the Reverend Lord Arthur Hervey, in the year 1843, sowed a handful
of oats, treated them in the manner recommended, by continually
stopping the flowering stems, and the produce, in 1844, has been
for the most part ears of a very slender barley, having much the
appearance of rye, with a little wheat, and some oats; samples of
which are, by the favour of Lord Bristol, now before us.' The
learned writer then adverts to the 'extraordinary, but certain
fact, that in orchidaceous plants, forms just as different as
wheat, barley, rye, and oats, have been proved by the most rigorous
evidence, to be accidental variations of one common form, brought
about no one knows how, but before our eyes, and rendered
permanent by equally mysterious agency. Then says Reason, if they
occur in orchidaceous plants, why should they not also occur in
corn plants? for it is not likely that such vagaries will be
confined to one little group in the vegetable kingdom; it is more
rational to believe them to be a part of the _general system_ of
creation.... How can we be _sure_, that wheat, rye, oats, and
barley, are not all accidental off-sets from some unsuspected
species?'"

It may be so; but this would only prove that the "unsuspected species" included greater varieties, not that a really defined species was transmutable into another. But it is a point upon which no satisfactory result can be arrived at, since naturalists are not agreed in the classification of species, nor what attributes constitute one.

The Broomfield experiment is again brought forward, as decisive of the power to originate new life from inorganic elements. It will be remembered that Mr. WEEKES, of Sandwich, continued during three years to subject solutions to electric action, and invariably found insects produced in these instances, while they as invariably failed to appear where the electric action was not employed, but every other condition fulfilled. In a letter to the author of the _Vestiges_--two are inserted, one on the independent generation of fungi--Mr. WEEKES says--

"One hundred and sixty-six days from the commencement of the
experiment--the first acari seen in connexion therewith, six in
number and nearly full-grown, were discovered on the outside of the
open glass vessel. On removing two pieces of card which had been
laid over the mouth of this vessel, several fine specimens were
found inhabiting the under surfaces, and others completely
developed and in active motion here and there within the glass.
Making my visit at an hour when a more favourable light entered the
room, swarms of acari were found on the cards, about the glass
tumbler, both within and without, and also on the platform of the
apparatus. At this identical hour Dr. J. Black favoured me with a
call, inspected the arrangements, and received six living specimens
of the acarus produced from solution in the open vessel."

Specimens of the insect were sent to Paris, when they set a whole conclave of philosophers a-laughing, because they were found to contain ova. Other specimens were sent to London, but there their fate was sealed by their being found to be, not a new species, but one then abundant in the country. For ourselves we think the experiment not conclusive. We adopt HUME'S principle. All but universal experience having established that life is _ex ovo_ only, we must have a proportionate body of counter evidence to establish a different mode of generation. At all events, Mr. WEEKES'S protracted gestation of 166 days by his galvanic battery is not likely, in the existing rage for despatch, to supersede the existing routine of reproduction.

LONDON: PRINTED BY C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.

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6.--FINE ARTS, Weekly notices of pictorial exhibitions, and critical descriptions of paintings, drawings, and engravings, with commentaries on all new works of art.

7.--SCIENTIFIC NOTICES, or descriptions of improvements in Mechanics and the experimental Sciences, illustrated occasionally by diagrams, with an account of New Patents, Meteorological Tables, Proceedings of Literary and Scientific Institutions, &c.

The Literary division of the ATLAS in the various branches has formed an era in the class of publications in which it ranks; and exhibits a remarkable union of the essential features of the more elaborate Reviews, with the popular and practical objects of the General Newspaper.

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Published for the Proprietor, at the office, 6, Southampton-street, Strand, London.--Price Eight Pence. Orders received by all Newsmen throughout the Kingdom.

_In one volume octavo, cloth lettered, price Five Shillings,_

NATIONAL DISTRESS,

ITS CAUSES AND REMEDIES;

A Prize Essay

AS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN "THE ATLAS."

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By SAMUEL LAING, Esq., Jun.,

_Late Fellow of St. John's, Cambridge._

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