miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of
admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.
Examine the recently laid egg of some common animal, such as a salamander
or newt. It is a minute spheroid in which the best microscope will reveal
nothing but a structureless sac, enclosing a glairy fluid, holding granules
in suspension. [Footnote: When this sentence was written, it was generally
believed that the original nucleus of the egg (the germinal vesicle)
disappeared. 1893.] But strange possibilities lie dormant in that
semi-fluid globule. Let a moderate supply of warmth reach its watery
cradle, and the plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, yet so steady
and purposelike in their succession, that one can only compare them to
those operated by a skilled modeller upon a formless lump of clay. As with
an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided into smaller and
smaller portions, until it is reduced to an aggregation of granules not too
large to build withal the finest fabrics of the nascent organism. And,
then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the line to be occupied by
the spinal column, and moulded the contour of the body; pinching up the
head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into
due salamandrine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching
the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the
notion, that some more subtle aid to vision than an achromatic, would show
the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful
manipulation to perfect his work.

As life advances, and the young amphibian ranges the waters, the terror of
his insect contemporaries, not only are the nutritious particles supplied
by its prey, by the addition of which to its frame, growth takes place,
laid down, each in its proper spot, and in such due proportion to the rest,
as to reproduce the form, the colour, and the size, characteristic of the
parental stock; but even the wonderful powers of reproducing lost parts