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--