these globules be identical with the cells which are now held to be
reproductive, it _might_ be said that the production of albumen by
artificial means is the only step in the process wanting. This has not
yet been effected." (p. 177.)

These are the advances towards generation by chemistry and electricity.
The process, however, according to this detail, appears still far from
complete. Albumen is to be produced "by artificial means;" and even then
we should doubt entire success. Chemists have long commanded the power
to resolve the seeds of animal and vegetable life into their elements;
they have analysed them, and shown the exact weight and proportion of
each constituent; but they never could put them together again, or, by
any similar compound produce the primordial egg or organic germ, from
which a living being would arise. A connecting link--a vital spark, or
animating soul--is always wanting to complete the existence of the
Prometheus of the laboratory. Mark, too, the "_if_," and the "_might_,"
in this most lame and impotent hypothesis:--"_If_, therefore, these
globules be identical with the cells which are held to be reproductive,
it _might_ be said," &c. Globules can be easily produced; the passage of
the electric fluid through water will produce aerial globules in rapid
and expansive movement; boys can produce them with suds and a
tobacco-pipe in rapid succession, each, for aught we know, containing a
"granule" that multiplies by "fissiporous generation." But these are not
organic globules, and the author has committed the great perversion in
language or logic of confounding the organic globule of life with the
inorganic globule of a chemist. His theory is more fanciful than that of
LAMARCK, from whom it is derived, and who had, at least, his _petit
corps gelatineux_ to begin with--to commence weaving organic tissue
from--but our author's organic globule is not so substantive a
conception; and as he does not pretend to be able to produce even this