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He says: "A very simple form, fitted for very simple conditions of life, might remain for indefinite ages unaltered, or unimproved; for what would it profit an infusorial animalcule, or an intestinal worm, to become highly organized?" Animals and Plants, vol. 1, p. 19. "Under very simple conditions of life a higher organism would be of no service." Origin of Species, p. 100.
He then turned his attention to the mercury bath, and found on examination that the surface of the mercury was almost always covered with a very fine dust. He found that even the mercury itself was positively full of organic matters; that from being constantly exposed to the air, it had collected an immense number of these infusorial organisms from the air.
The assertion, that man's "first form is that which is permanent in the animalcule," even if we do not look to the potentiality of development into a higher being, which experience shows to exist in the human germ, but not in the infusorial, is a positive misstatement. The lowest monad has a mouth and means for propagating its kind, which do not belong to the primitive ovum of any higher animal.
Among the lower forms of animal life, the infusorial animalculae we have already spoken of throw off certain portions, or break themselves up in various directions, sometimes transversely or sometimes longitudinally; or they may give off buds, which detach themselves and develop into their proper forms. There is the common fresh-water Polype, for instance, which multiplies itself in this way.
Led by various theoretical considerations which I cannot now discuss, but which looked promising enough in the lights of their time, Buffon and Needham doubted the applicability of Redi's hypothesis to the infusorial animalcules, and Needham very properly endeavoured to put the question to an experimental test.
It will be ground still finer in the process. For the final polishing, a little infusorial earth or even kaolin will do. The surface to be ground is moistened with water and dusted over with a little of the abrasive. The plug is now inserted in the stopcock, and turned with a gentle pressure.
With but trifling exceptions, from infusorial up to man, the female animal moves, breathes, looks, listens, runs, flies, swims, pursues its food, eats it, digests it, in precisely the same manner as the male; all instincts, all characteristics, are the same, except as to the one solitary fact of parentage. Mr.
Of course, he expected he would get no infusorial animalcules at all in that infusion; but, to his great dismay and discomfiture, he found he almost always did get them.
These successive evolutions, as of a chrysalis, which God thus wrought in our souls, this infusorial life, so to speak, communicated from each zone to the next, more vivid, more spiritual, more perceptive in its ascent, represented, rather dimly no doubt, but marvelously enough to his inexperienced hearers, the impulse given to Nature by the Almighty.
Of course, he expected he would get no infusorial animalcules at all in that infusion; but, to his great dismay and discomfiture, he found he almost always did get them.
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