mind, and the fourth on good and evil. The machinery of the poem is drawn from Eleusian Mysteries; as in them the philosophy of the works of nature, with the origin and progress of society, are supposed to have been explained by Hierophants to the initiated, by means of alligoric scenery, so in the present poem, the priestess of nature at the intercession of Urania, withdraws from the goddess the mystic veil which shrouds her from profane eyes, and unfolds to her votary the laws of organic life.

The theory which Dr. Darwin laid down in the first volume of Zoonomia, he has here illuminated with all the splendor of poetry: it is illustrated with additional observations, and supported with additional facts; in short, "The Temple of Nature" may be almost called Zoonomia in verse. We have read the poem with attention and delight; so accustomed as we are to behold the mental imbecility which old age induces, it is most grateful and consolatory when we contemplate those exceptions which occasionally present themselves, where the vigour of the mind outlives the vigour of the body, and where old age, which has relaxed the fibres of the outward man, and struck with infirmity and decriptitude his mortal frame, retires, baffied and disgraced, from an unequal conflict with his etherial and immortal part.

The poem bears no mark of senility about it; the lamp of Darwin's genius burns brightly to the last; its light, if not at all times safe and steady, is ever beautiful and brilliant; and the Temple of Nature, in its darkest and most secret recesses, is partially at least illuminated by its rays.

The present poem if possible, is more carefully polished than the Botanic Garden: it presents some pictures of uncommon beauty; we could select several, but must content ourselves with one or two.... The epithets and the imagery em

The solitude, silence, and decay, here represented, are so many insignia of Oblivion; and her residence among "unlabell'd graves," together with her employment of o'erturning tombs of shaking their ashes....that last memorial!....from the mouldering urns, are very happily imagined. The note on the cave of Trophonious is worth inserting: "Plutarch mentions, that prophecies of evil events were uttered from the cave of Trophonius; but this allogorical story, that whoever entered this cavern never again seen to smile, seems to have been designed to warn the contemplative from considering too much the dark side of Nature. Thus an ancient poet is said to have written a poem on the miseries of the world, to have thence become so unhappy as to destroy himself.

were

We have on more occasions than one given our opinion of Dr. Darwin's poetry: the present volume eminently exhibits all his beautics and all his faults. The Doctor overloads his lines with gold and silver, silks and velvets, corals and chrystals, and with orient pearls. He seems to fancy that a monarch is no longer a monarch than when he is seated on the throne, clothed in his robes of royalty, and encumbered with his rich crown of jewels! With him the king of Great Britain, plainly dressed like a private gentleman, is nothing compared to the king of Ava, whose limbs totter under the wealthy weight ofhis ornaments,and who, Major Symes assures us, is

unable to mount his throne without the support and assistance of two pages! The last extract was not selected with any view to expose this taste for finery; but it will be observed, that the lines are almost so many threads of gold or silver: and although it happens that no orient pearl or random ruby is strung upon them, the poem is richly gemmed also with such European rarities. If it would not be cal, that we should also object to thought captious and hyper-critiwords: nascent and renascent, vothe too frequent use of affected lant, susurrant, &c. &c. In short, the great fault of Dr. Darwin's poetry is its dazzling and excessive polish, and that "balancing of the line," as Mr- Headly calls it, which makes the first part of it betray the second.

But let us not be suspected of depreciating Dr. Darwin; his knowledge was various and profound; his imagination ardent and fertile; and his genius, ever on the wing, steries of organic nature. penetrated into the obscurest my

In one of his notes we see that Dr. Darwin has revived the exploded doctrine of Spontaneous Vitality. As the subject is curious, we shall endeavour to compres his arguments. He begins by endeavouring to remove some prejudices

against the doctrine, arising from the misconception of the ignorant or superstitious; in the first place, that it is contradicted by Holy Writ, which says that God created animals and vegetables; as if there were not more dignity in our idea of the Supreme Author of all things when we conceive him to be the cause of causes, than the cause simply of the events we see....In the next place, that it is applied to the production of the larger animals; but spontaneous vitality is certainly only to be looked for in the simplest organic beings, as in the smallest microscopic animal. cules: and thirdly, that there is no analogy to sanction it; but this want of analogy equally opposes all new discoveries, as of the magnetic needle, the coated electric jar, and the Galvanic pile.

He then makes some preliminary observations: That the power of reproduction distinguishes organic being whether vegetable or animal, from inanimate nature. That the reproduction of plants and animals is of two kinds, which may be termed solitary and sexual: that the former of these, as in the reproduction of the buds of trees, and of the bulbs of tulips, of the polypus and aphis, appears to be the first or most simple mode of generation, as many of these organic beings afterwards acquire sexual organs, as the flowers of seedling trees and of seedling tulips, and the autumnal progeny of the aphis. By reproduction organic beings are gradually enlarged and improved; "thus (says he) the buds of a seedling tree, or the bulbs of seedling tulips, become larger and stronger in the second year than the first, and thus improve till they acquire flowers or sexes; and the aphis, I believe, increases in bulk to the eighth or ninth generation, and then produces a sexual progeny. Hence the existence of spontaneous vitality is only to be expected to be found in the simplest modes of animation as the complex

VOL. I....NO. VI.

ones have been formed by many successive reproductions."

From these preliminary observations, Dr. Darwin proceeds to experimental facts: "By the experiments of Buffon, Reaumur, Ellis, Ingenhouz, and others, microscopic animals are produced in three or four days, according to the warmth of the season, in the infusions of all vegetable or animal matter. One or more of these gentlemen put some boiling veal-broth into a phial, previously heated in the fire, and sealing it up hermetically, or with melted wax; observed it to be replete with animalcules in three or four days." "To suppose the eggs of these animals to float in the atmosphere, and pass through the sealed glass phial, is contrary to apparent nature, as to be totally incredible." Again: "In paste composed of flour and water, which has been suffered to become scescent, the animalcules called eels, vibrio anguillula, are seen in great abundance; their motions are rapid and strong; they are viviparous, and produce at intervals a numerous progeny: animals similar to these are also found in vinegar; Naturalist's Miscellany, by Shaw and Nodder, vol. II....As these animals are viviparous, it is absurd to suppose that their parents float universally in the atmosphere to lay their young in paste and vinegar!

The conferva fontinalis of Dr. Priestly is a vegetable body which appears to be produced by a spontaneous vital process. Dr. Ingenhouz asserts, "that by filling a bottle with well-water, and inverting it immediately into a basin of well-water, this green vegetable is formed in great quantity; and he believes, that the water itself, or some substance contained in the water, is converted into this kind of vegetation, which then quickly propagates itself."

Mucor, or mouldiness, is another vegetable, the incipient growth of which Mr. Ellis observed by his

6

microscope near the surface of all putrifying vegetables or animal

matter.

After having proceeded thus far, Dr. Darwin unfolds his theory of spontaneous vitality; it will be recognised as extremely similar to the theory of glandular secretions, laid down by Zoonomia, and afterwards applied to vegetable reproductions in Phytologia. As in animal or chemical combinations, one of the composing materials must possess a power of attraction, as the magnet, and the other an aptitude to be attracted, as a piece of iron: so in vegetable or animal combinations there must exist two kinds of organic matter, one possessing the appetency to unite, and the other the propensity to be united. Thus in the generation of the buds of trees, it is probable that two kinds of vegetable matter....one of them endued with this appetency to unite with the other, and the latter with this propensity to be united with the former...." as they are separted from the solid system, and float in the circulation, become arrested by two kinds of vegetable glands, and are then deposited beneath the cuticle of the tree, and there join together, forming a new vegetable, the caudex of which extends from the pulmula at the summit to the radicles beneath the soil, and constitutes a single fibre of the bark;" so in the sexual reproduction of animals, certain parts, separated from the living organs, and floating in the blood, are arrested by the sexual glands of the female, and others by those of the male. Of these none are complete embryon animals, but form an embryon by their reciprocal conjunction. "There hence appears to be an analogy between generation and nutrition, as one is the production of new organization, and the other the restoration of that which previously existed, and which therefore may be supposed to require materials somewhat similar. Now the food taken up by animal lacteals is previously prepared by the chemi

cal process of digestion in the stomach; but that which is taken up by vegetable lacteals is prepared by chemical dissolution of organic matter formed beneath the surface of the earth. Thus the particles which form generated animal embryons are prepared from dead organic matter by the chimico-animal processes of sanguification and of secretion; while those which form spontaneous microscopic animals or microscopic vegetables are prepared by chemical dissolutions and new combinations of organic matter in watery fluids with sufficient warmth!"

Some microscopic animalcules are said to remain dead for many days or weeks, when the fluid in which they existed is dried up, and quickly to recover life and motion by the fresh addition of water and warmth; thus, the chaos redivivum of Linnæus dwells in vinegar, and in book-binder's paste: it revives by water, after having been dried for years, and is both oviparous and viviparous. Syst. Nat. Shell-snails have been kept in the cabinets of the curious in a dry state for ten years or longer, and have revived on being moistened with warmish water. Phil. Tran....The hydra of Linnæus revives after having. been dried, restores itself after mutilation, is multiplied by being divided, is propagated from small portions, and lives after being inverted. All these phenomena Dr. Darwin thinks would be best explained by the doctrine of spontaneous reproduction from organic particles not yet completely decomposed; and he is inclined to infer that "organic particles of dead vegetables and animals, during their usual chemical changes into putridity or acidity, do not lose all their organization or vitality, but retain so much of it as to unite with the parts of living animals in the process of nutrition; or unite and produce new complicate animals by secretion, as in generation; or produce very simple microscopic animals, or microscopic vegetables,

by their new combinations in warmth and moisture."

This theory, then, assumes the principle of a perpetual and progressive improvement, by reproduction, in all animals and vegetables; it assumes also that this improvement produces an absolute change in the generating organs. Chemical dissolutions and new combinations of organic matter in watry fluids, with sufficient warmth, prepare particles, which in consequence of certain inherent and essential appetencies and propensities, unite with each other and form microscopic animalcules. This Dr. Darwin calls spontaneous vitality, and is the first link in the chain. Dr. Priestly's conferva fontinalis, the fungi which grow on rotten timber, in vaults, &c. the esculent mushroom, and the microscopic animalcules found in all solutions of vegetable or animal matter in water, although themselves spontaneously originating from the congress of decomposing organic particles, nevertheless possess the power of producing others like themselves by solitary reproduction without sex. Mr. Ellis in Phil. Trans. V. LIX. The next inferior kinds of vegetables and animals also, as the buds and bulbs raised immediately from seeds, the lycoperdon tuber, with probably many other fungi, and the polypus, volvox and tania, propagate by solitary generation only. This is the second link. "Those of the next order propagate both by solitary and sexual reproduction, as those buds and bulbs which produce flowers, as well as other buds and bulbs, and the apis, and probably many other insects; whence it appears that many of those vegetables and animals which are produced by solitary generation, gradually become more perfect, and at length produce a sexual progeny."

But the transition from solitary to sexual reproduction was too ab rupt: a small intermediate link therefore was interposed, namely,

the hermaphrodite mode of reproduction; as in those flowers which have anthers and stigmas in the same corol: from this imperfection of state, some animals, as snails and worms, have not yet extricated themselves. As hermaphrodite insects, shell-snails, dew-worms, &c. are seen reciprocally to copulate with each other, it is suspected that they are incapable of impregnating themselves. For the final cause of this incapacity, see Zoon. Vol. I. Sect. xxxix. 6.2. This is the third link. The most perfect order of animals are propagated by sexual intercourse only. This is the last link: the master piece of Nature!

If such has been the progress of perfection in the formative organs of the animal and vegetable kingdoms....if the powers which certain species now enjoy, are the consequence of efforts uninterrupt edly exerted through the lapse of countless ages, are we to infer, that the nobler animals, and MAN among them, were originally constituted with this primitive organic simplicity? All male quadrupeds, and the biped man, have breasts and nipples: the breasts at nativity are replete with a thin milky fluid, and the nipples swell on titillation. Are these, then, the frustrate vestiges of ancient structure? Was there a time in the juvenility of the

"This however does not extend to vegetables, as all those raised from seed produce some generation of buds or bulbs previous to their producing flowers, as occurs not only in trees, but also in annual plants. Thus three each other before that which produces or four joints of wheat grow upon a flower"....analogously with the reproduction of aphides...." which joints each other, like the buds of trees, are all separate plants growing over previous to the uppermost; though this happens in a few months in an nual plants, which requires as many years in the successive buds of trees, as is further explained in Phytologia, Sect. IX. 3. 1."