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or the alluvial and volcanic, are still forming, and have been, ever since the great work of creation was completed, the precise duration of the last two days of creative labour can have no influence upon this question. But to a plain yet attentive reader of the Mosaic account even these two days must, I think, appear to have been of a far more protracted length than that of twenty-four hours each, and especially the sixth day; for it is difficult to conceive how the first parent of mankind could have got through the vast extent of work assigned to him within the short term of twelve or fourteen hours of daylight, without a miracle, which is by no means intimated to us, and as difficult to suppose that he was employed through the night. On this last day were created, as we learn from Gen. i. 24-28, all the land-animals after their kind, cattle, and wild beasts, and reptiles; then Adam himself, but alone; who was next, as we learn from ch. ii. 15-22, taken and put into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it; where he had explained to him the trees he might eat of, and the tree he might not; after which were brought to him, that he might make himself acquainted with their respective natures, every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; to all of whom he gave names as soon as their respective characters became known to him. Subsequently to which (for at this time, v. 20, there was not found a help-meet for him), he was plunged into a deep sleep, when the woman was formed out of a part of himself, which completed the creative labour of this last day alone.

That the same Almighty Power who created light by a word, saying TIN '7'78 7" "be light! and light was,"* could have ruled the whole of this, or even formed the universe, by a word, as well, is not to be doubted; but as both the book of revelation and the book of nature concur in telling us that such was not the fact, and that the work of creation went on progressively, and under the influence of a code of natural laws, we are called upon to examine into the march of this marvellous progress by the laws of nature referred to, and to understand it by their operations. Nor is it more derogatory to Him with whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years, to suppose that He allotted six hundred or six thousand years to the completion of his design, than that He took six solar days for the purpose; and surely there is something far more magnificent in conceiving the world to have gradually attained form, order, and vitality, by the mere operation of powers communicated to it in a state of chaos, through a single command, which instantly took effect and commenced, and persevered and perfected the design proposed, than in conceiving the Almighty engaged in personal and continuous exertions, though for a more limited period of time. Thus, in progressive order, uprose the stupendous system of the world: the bright host of morning stars shouted together on its birth-day; and the eternal Creator looked down with complacency on the finished fabric, and 66 saw that it was good."

LECTURE VIII.

ON ORGANIZED BODIES, AND THE STRUCTURE OF PLANTS COMPARED WITH THAT

OF ANIMALS.

FROM the unorganized world, which has formed the main subject of our last two lectures, let us now rise a step higher in the scale of creation; and ascend from insentient matter to life, under the various modifications it assumes, and the means by which it is upheld and transmitted.

If I dig up a stone, and remove it from one place to another, the stone will suffer no alteration by the change of place; but if I dig up a plant and remove it, the plant will instantly sicken, and perhaps die. What is the cause of this

* Gen. i. 3
F

I concur with these elegant writers in admitting the beautiful and harmonious relation so obviously established between minerals, plants, and animals; but it is at the same time impossible to allow of the distinction between vegetable and animal life here laid down; because, first, vegetables are by no means nourished exclusively, as, indeed, M. Mirbel himself frankly allows, from terrene elements; and, secondly, because animals are as little nourished exclusively from vegetable materials. Among insects, worms, and even fishes, there are many tribes that derive by far the greater portion of their increase from the mineral kingdom alone; while even in man himself, air, water, common salt, and lime, which last is almost always an ingredient of common salt, are substances indispensable to his growth, and are derived immediately from the mineral kingdom.

In laying down, therefore, a distinctive character for animals and plants, we are compelled to derive it from the more perfect of each kind; and to leave the extreme cases to be determined by the chemical components eliminated on their decomposition. And under this broadview of the subject I now proceed to observe, that while they agree in an origin by generation, a growth by nutrition, and a termination by death; in an organized structure, and an internal living principle; they differ in the powers with which the living principle is endowed, and the effects it is capable of exerting. In the plant it is limited, so far as we are capable of tracing it, to the properties of irritability, contractility, and simple instincts; in the animal it superadds to these properties those of muscularity, sensation, and voluntary motion.

There have been, indeed, and there still are, physiologists who,-not adverting to the extraordinary effects which the power of irritability is capable of producing when roused by different stimulants, and under the influence of an internal and all-pervading principle of life, operating by instinctive laws and instinctive actions, or those, as we shall show hereafter, which are specially directed to the growth, preservation, or reproduction of a living frame, or any particular part of it,-have conceived plants as well as animals to be possessed of sensation and muscular fibres; and as sensation is the result of a particular organ, and the organ producing it is connected with various others, have at the same time liberally endowed them with a brain, a heart, and a stomach; and have very obligingly permitted them to possess ideas, and the means of communicating ideas; to fall in love and to marry, and thus far to exercise the distinctive faculty of volition. The whole of which, how ever, is mere fancy, grounded altogether upon an erroneous and contracted view of the effects of the principle of irritability when powerfully excited by the influence of light, heat, air, moisture, and other causes.

In reality, such kinds of loves and intermarriages are not peculiar to plants, but are common to all nature: they exist between atom and atom, and the philosopher calls them attractions; they exist between congeries and congeries, and the chemist calls them affinities; they exist between the iron and the loadstone, and every one denominates them magnetism. Nor let it be said that in these cases of mutual union we have nothing more than a mere aggregation of body; for we have often a third substance produced, and actually generated, as the result of such union, far more discrepant from the parent substances both in quality and feature than are ever to be met with in vegetable or animal life. Thus, if an acid be married to an alkali, the progeny brought forth will be a neutral salt, possessing not the remotest resemblance to the virtues of either of its parents. In like manner, if alkohol be married to any of the more powerful acids, and the banns be solemnized over an altar of fire, but not otherwise, the offspring engendered will be a substance called ether, equally unlike both its parents in its disposition. But the form or features are as frequently changed as the temper. Thus, if we unite olive oil, which is a liquid, with some of the oxides of lead, which are powders, the result is neither a liquid nor a powder, nor a medium of the two, which would be a paste, but the hard adhesive plaster usually called diachylon. So, again, if muriatic acid, which is a liquid, sport in dalliance with the

shall soon find our definition untenable; for while the Linnæan class of worms affords instances, in perhaps every one of its orders, of animals destitute of locomotion, and evincing no mark of consciousness or sensation, there are various species of plants that are strictly locomotive, and that discover a much nearer approach to a sensitive faculty.

However striking, therefore, the distinctions between animal and vegetable life, in their more perfect and elaborate forms, as we approach the contiguous extremities of the two kingdoms we find these distinctions fading away so gradually,

Shade, unperceived, so softening into shade,

and the mutual advances so close and intimate, that it becomes a task of no common difficulty to draw a line of distinction between them, or to determine to which of them an individual may belong. And it is probable, that that extraordinary order of beings called zoophytes, or animated plants, as the term imports, and which by Woodward and Beaumont were arranged as minerals,* and by Ray and Lister as vegetables, have at last obtained an introduction into the animal kingdom,† less on account of any other property they possess, than of their affording, on being burnt, an ammoniacal smell like that which issues from burnt bones, or any other animal organs, and which is seldom or never observed from burnt vegetable substances of a decided and unquestionable character. Ammonia, however, upon destructive distillation, is met with in small quantities in particular parts of most if not of all vegetables, though never perhaps in the whole plant. Thus it occurs slightly in the wood or vegetable fibre; in extract, gum-mucilage, camphor, resin, and balsam; gumresin, gluten, and caoutchouc : besides those substances that are common to both animals and vegetables, as sugar, fixed oil, albumen, fibrine, and gelatine. There are some plants, however, that even in their open exposure to a burning heat give forth an ammoniacal smell closely approaching to that of animal substance. The clavarias or club-tops, and many other funguses, do this. But a distinction in the degree of odour may even here be observed, if accurately attended to. Yet the clavarias were once regarded as zoophytes, and are arranged by Millar in the same division as the corals and corallines.‡ M. de Mirbel, in his very excellent treatise “ On the Anatomy and Physiology of Plants," has endeavoured to lay down a distinction between the animal and the vegetable world in the following terms, and it is a distinction which seems to be approved by Sir Edward Smith; "Plants alone have a power of drawing nourishment from inorganic matter, mere earths, salts, or airs; substances incapable of nourishing animals, which only feed on what is or has been organized matter, either of a vegetable or animal nature. So that it should seem to be the office of vegetable life alone to transform dead matter into organized living bodies." Whence another learned French physiologist, M. Richerand, has observed that the aliments by which animals are nourished are selected from vegetable or animal substances alone; the elements of the mineral kingdom being too heterogeneous to the nature of animals to be converted into their own substance without being first elaborated by vegetable life; whence plants, says M. Richerand, may be considered as the laboratory in which nature prepares aliment for animals.||

*Phil. Trans. xiii. 277.

66

† Parkinson's Organic Remains, i. 23, ii. 157, 158.

Several species of this genus of fungi have very singular properties: thus the c. hæmatodes has so near a resemblance to tanned leather, though somewhat thinner and softer, as to be named oak-leather club-top, from its being chiefly found in the clefts and hollows of oak-trees. In Ireland, it is employed as leather to dress wounds with; and, in Virginia, to spread plasters upon.

There are some cryptogamic plants, and especially among the mosses, that can be hardly made to burn by any means. Such is the fontinella antipyretica, so called on this very account; and which is hence in common use among the Scandinavians, as a lining for their chimney sides, and the inside of their chimneys, by way of preservation. So that here we have an approach to mineral instead of to animal substances, and especially to the asbestos and other species of talcose earths. There is one species of byssus, another curious genus of mosses, that takes the specific name of asbestos from this very property. It is found in the Swedish copper mines of Westmann-land in large quantities, and when exposed to a red heat Instead of being consumed, is vitrified.

Traité d'Anatomie et de Physiologie Végétale, i. 19.
Elémens de Physiologie, &c. cap. de la Digestion

darkness was upon the face of the deep (or abyss).- And the Spirit of God MOVED upon the FACE OF THE WATERS."

We are hence, therefore, necessarily led to infer that the first change of the formless chaos, after its existence, was into a state of universal aqueous solution; for it was upon the surface of the waters that the Divine Spirit commenced his operative power. We are next informed, that this chaotie mass acquired shape, not instantaneously, but by a series of six distinct days, or GENERATIONS (that is, epochs), as Moses afterward calls them; and appirently through the agency of the established laws of gravity and crystallizz tion, which regulate it at the present moment.

It tells us, that during the first of these days, or generations, was evolved. what, indeed, agreeably to the laws of gravity, must have been evolved first of all, the matter of light and heat; of all material substances the most subtle and attenuate; those by which alone the sun operates, and has ever operated, upon the earth and the other planets, and which may be the identical substances that constitute his essence. And it tells us also, that the luminous matter thus evolved produced light without the assistance of the sun or moon which were not set in the sky or firmament, and had no rule till the fourth day or generation: that the light thus produced flowed by tides, and alternately intermitted, constituting a single day and a single night of each of such epochs or generations, whatever their length might be, of which we have no information communicated to us.

It tells us, that during the second day or generation uprose progressively the fine fluids, or waters, as they are poetically and beautifully denominated, of the firmament, and filled the blue ethereal void with a vital atmosphere. That during the third day or generation the waters more properly so called, or the grosser and compacter fluids of the general mass, were strained off and gathered together into the vast bed of the ocean, and the dry land began to make its appearance, by disclosing the peaks or highest points of the prim tive mountains; in consequence of which a progress instantly commenced from inorganic matter to vegetable organization, the surface of the earth, as well above as under the waters, being covered with plants and herbs, bearing seeds after their respective kinds; thus laying a basis for those carbonaceous materials, the remains of vegetable matter, which we have already observed are occasionally to be traced in some of the layers or formations of the class of primitive rocks (the lowest of the whole), without a single particle of animal relics intermixed with them.

It tells us, that during the fourth day, or epoch, the sun and moon, now completed, were set in the firmament, the solar system was finished, its laws were established, and the celestial orrery was put into play; in consequence of which the harmonious revolutions of signs and of seasons, of days and of years, struck up for the first time their mighty symphony. That the fifth pe riod was allotted exclusively to the formation of water-fowl, and the countless tribes of aquatic creatures; and consequently, to that of those lowest ranks of animal life, testaceous worms, corals, and other zoophytes, whose relics, as we have already observed, are alone to be traced in the second class of rocks or transition-formations, and still more freely in the third or horizontal formations; these being the only animals as yet created, since the air and the water, and the utmost peaks of the loftiest mountains, were the only parts as yet inhabitable. It tells us, still continuing the same grand and exquisite climax, that towards the close of this period, the mass of waters having sufficiently retired into the deep bed appointed for them, the sixth and concluding period was devoted to the formation of terrestrial animals; and, last of all, as the masterpiece of the whole, to that of man himself.

Such is the beautiful but literal progression of the creation, according to the Mosaic account, as must be perceived by every one who will carefully peruse it for himself.

Of the extent, however, of the DAYS OF GENERATIONS that preceded the forma

• Gen. ii. 4.

↑ Herschel, Phil. Trans, vol. lxxxiv.

tion of the sun and moon, and their display in the sky or firmament, it gives us, as I have just observed, no information whatever. We only know that the flow of luminous matter which measured them advanced or was kindled up by regular tides; so that it alternately appeared and disappeared, commencing with a dawn and terminating with a dusk or darkness; for at the close of each it is said, "and the evening and the morning were the first day :" or, more literally, as indeed suggested in the marginal reading of our national version," and there was evening and there was morning the first day;" that is, there was dusk and dawn, and by no means such an evening and morning as we have at present. And hence, Origen observes, that "no one of a sound mind can imagine there was an evening and a morning during the first three days without a sun." So that the passage should, perhaps, be rendered, as most strictly it might be," and there was dusk As there was dawn, the first

ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד-".day

It has, indeed, been contended, that each of these periods constituted a solar day, or a revolution of the earth round its own axis, and consequently answered to the measure of twenty-four hours, as at present. But to maintain this opinion it is necessary to suppose that the sun and the moon were set in the sky "to rule over the day and over the night,”—“ to divide the light from the darkness,”—and to “be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years," on or before the very first day or generation; for otherwise there could be no solar day, or such as we have at present, produced by a revolution of the earth round her own axis. And there have not been wanting cosmologists and critics, as Whiston and Rosenmüller, who have maintained that the sun and the moon were created antecedently to the earth; that they had their stations allotted them in the heavens, and actually produced solar days and diurnal revolutions of the earth from the first. But though their own hypothesis require this, the idea is directly opposed to the spirit and the letter of the Mosaic narrative, and hence can in no respect be acceded to by any one who is anxious to preserve this narrative in its integrity and simplicity. How much more explanatory and pertinent is the remark of our own excellent Bishop Hall, when speaking of the primeval light, that during the first three days illuminated the face of nature: "Not," says he, "of the sun or stars, WHICH WERE NOT YET CREATED; but a common brightness only, to distinguish THE TIME, and to remedy the former confused darkness." And how admirably to the same effect does Bishop Beveridge thus express himself: "When he said, let there be light, by that word the light, WHICH WAS NOT BEFORE, BEGAN TO BE. But when he said (that is, three days or generations afterward), let there be lights in the firmament, to divide the day from the night, he thereby GAVE LAWS TO THE LIGHT he had before made, where he would have it sɛ, and what he would have it Do. This is what we call the law of nature: that law which God hath put into the nature of every thing; whereby it always keeps itself within such bounds, and acts according to such rules, as God hath set it, and by that means shows forth the glory of his wisdom and power.” Nothing, indeed, can be clearer, than that, according to Moses, the sun and the moon were only set in the heavens during the fourth day or generation in the work of creation; and that, whatever may be the relative proportion of the times and the seasons, the light and the darkness, the day and the night, that have occurred subsequently, we have no reason to suppose they occurred in the same proportion antecedently; since we are expressly told by the same inspired writer, that their immediate office, on being set in the sky, was to CLE these divisions of time, as they have ruled them, with a single miraculous exception or two, ever since, and to divide the light from the darkness, as it has since been divided.

We have no knowledge whatever, therefore, of the length of the first three or four DAYS OF GENERATIONS that marked the great work of creation, antecedently to the completion of the sun and moon, and their appointment to their respective posts. And hence, for all that appears to the contrary, they may

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