ADDITIONAL NOTES. NOTE I-SPONTANEOUS VITALITY PREJUDICES AGAINST THIS DOCTRINE. I. FROM the misconception of the ignorant or superstitious, it has been thought somewhat profane to speak in favour of spontaneous vital production, as if it contradicted holy writ; which says, that God created animals and vegetables. They do not recollect that God created all things which exist, and that these have been from the beginning in a perpetual state of improvement; which appears from the globe itself, as well as from the animals and vegetables, which possess it. And lastly, that there is more dignity in our idea of the Supreme Author of all things, when we conceive him to be the cause of causes, than the cause simply of the events, which we see; if there can be any difference in infinity of power! and Galvanic pile; which should therefore certainly be well weighed and nicely investigated before distinct credence is given them; but then the want of analogy must at length yield to repeated ocular demonstration. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. II. Concerning the spontaneous production of the smallest microscopic animals it should be first observed, that the power of reproduction distinguishes organic being, whether vegetable or animal, from inanimate nature. The circulation of fluids in vessels may exist in hydraulic machines, but the power of reproduction belongs alone to life. This reproduction of plants and of animals is of two kinds, which may be termed solitary and sexual. The former of these, as in the reproduction of the buds of trees, and of the bulbs of tulips, and of the polypus, and aphis, appears to be the first or most simple mode of generation, as many of these organic beings afterwards acquire sexual organs, as the flowers of seedling frees, and of seeding tulips, and the autumnal progeny of the aphis. See Phytologia. Another prejudice which has prevailed against the spontaneous production of vitality, seems to Secondly, it should be observed, that by rehave arisen from the misrepresentation of this production organic beings are gradually enlarged doctrine, as if the larger animals had been thus and improved; which may perhaps more rapidly produced; as Ovid supposes after the deluge of and uniformly occur in the simplest modes of Deucalion, that lions were seen rising out of the animated being; but occasionally also in the mud of the Nile, and struggling to disentangle more complicated and perfect kinds. Thus the their hinder parts. It was not considered, that buds of a seedling tree, or the bulbs of seedling animals and vegetables have been perpetually tulips, become larger and stronger in the second improving by reproduction; and that spontane-year than the first, and thus improve till they ous vitality was only to be looked for in the acquire flowers or sexes; and the aphis, I besimplest organic beings, as in the smallest mi- lieve, increases in bulk to the eighth or ninth croscopic animalcules; which perpetually, per-generation, and then produces a sexual progeny. haps hourly, enlarge themselves by reproduction, like the roots of tulips from seed, or the buds of seedling trees, which die annually, leaving others by solitary reproduction rather more perfect than themselves for many successive years, till at length they acquire sexual organs or flowers. A third prejudice against the existence of spontaneous vital productions has been the supposed want of analogy; this has also arisen from the expectation, that the larger or more complicated animals should be thus produced; which have acquired their present perfection by successive generations during an uncounted series of ages. Add to this, that the want of analogy opposes the credibility of all new discoveries, as of the magnetic needle, and coated electric jar, Hence the existence of spontaneous vitality is only to be expected to be found in the simplest modes of animation, as the complex ones have been formed by many successive reproductions. EXPERIMENTAL FACTS. III. By the experiments of Buffon, Reumur, Ellis, Ingenhouz, and others, microscopic animals are produced in three or four days, according to the warmth of the season, in the infusions of all vegetable or animal matter. One or more of these gentlemen put some boiling veal broth into a phial previously heated in the fire, and sealing it up hermetically or with melted wax, observed it to be replete with animalcules in three or four days. |