by means of generation from cellules presenting to sensible observation
similar appearances. Natural history cannot prove, nor even attempt to
prove, more. Let us transport ourselves, in thought, to the moment at
which the highest points of the continents were for the first time
emerging from the primitive ocean. We see, on the parts of the soil
which are half-dried, and in certain conditions of heat and electricity,
particles of matter draw together and form those rudiments of organism
which are called living cellules. These cellules have the marvellous
faculty of self-propagation, and the faculty, not less marvellous, of
transmitting to their posterity the favorable modifications which they
have undergone. Generations succeed one another; gradually they form
separate branches. New characteristics show themselves; the organisms
become complicated, and becoming complicated they separate. The
vegetable is distinguished from the animal; the plant which will become
the palm-tree is distinguished from the oak which is in course of
formation, and the ancestor of the future bird is already different from
that of the fish. We follow up this great spectacle. The ages pass, they
pass by thousands and by millions, they pass by tens of millions. We
need not be stinting in our allowance of time; our imagination will be
tired of conceiving of it sooner than thought of supplying it. And at
what shall we have arrived at last? At the universe as it has been for
some few thousands of years past; at the world with its vegetables of a
thousand forms, grouped by classes and series, with the families of
animals, with the relations of animals to plants, with the unnumbered
harmonies of nature. Let us choose out one particular, on which to fix
our attention. Shall it be a she-goat--


Upstretched on fragrant cytisus to browse?