Even the wild Indian of our prairies has a more rational conception of
life and its accountabilities, than some of these learned professors
whose theoretical conclusions we find it imperative to handle. With all
his rude, rough nature, hanging like so many mental clogs about him,
this unlettered savage recognizes the fact that the earth is the
_genetrix omnium viventium_, or the living _mother_ on whose bosom he
shall rest when his spirit has passed to the happy hunting-fields
beyond. Unlettered as he is, and unread in any genesis of life, he fails
not to perceive that the earth is forever teeming with the germinal
principles of life, and that when his prairie fires have invaded the
forests in which he had previously hunted the deer, other and different
forest growths are constantly making their appearance, without any
apparent intervention of seeds, but not without the supervisional care
and direction of the Great Spirit,--while many of his hardier prairie
grasses have disappeared, only to give place to the more nutritious
_gramma_ coveted by his favorite game.

And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised
against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as
to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to
which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave
behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It
will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in
the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as
infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks.
But how about the preA"xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the
megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene
period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature,
did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one,
and we will answer it.