, and of
the retardation of the earth's motions, from which Sir Wm. Thompson (in
his Treatise on Geological Time) calculates, that our earth has not been
in a fit state for plants and animals for more than a hundred millions
of years; and he demonstrates the absurdity of the demand for unlimited
time, as contradictory to the facts of physical astronomy. Hence we deny
the possibility of evolution in the infinite ages of the past. There
never were any such ages on this world of ours.

4. Failing to find facts, evolutionists fall back upon analogies, and
support their hypothesis by the supposed analogy of the _growth of the
embryos of all plants and animals from germs alleged to be originally
perfectly similar_--simple protoplasm cells, which by subsequent
evolution, differentiate themselves as widely as the moss from the man.

The subject is too obscure for popular discussion. I can only announce
the results of the latest and most authoritative researches.[20]

1. Analogy is a very unsafe guide here, because the differences between
the limited life of the individual, and the alleged unlimited life of
the race, are precisely those of which we have no analogy.

2. It is not true that "the original substratum or material is in every
instance alike," nor that the "primordial cell is in every instance the
same," whether of the "lichen or the man;"[21] nor as others allege,
"that chemical reagents detect no differences between them." Chemical
reagents are very clumsy instruments for the analysis of living beings,
and their properties and powers; which are the antagonists of chemical
reactions. Nevertheless, heat is a well-known chemical agent, and the
application of heat to a fertilized, and to an unfertilized, germ
develops a whole world of difference between them. The one becomes a
chicken, the other an addled egg. Moreover, the application of different
degrees of heat to different germs produces the most various reactions.
The germs of trout are speedily killed by the moderate temperature of
65 deg. Fahrenheit, while the germs of most animalculae and plants develop
rapidly at that temperature. Such instances might be multiplied, but
these are sufficient to contradict the rash assertion of sameness,
because a hasty observer did not take pains to discover differences.

3. There are four distinct plans of structure in the animal kingdom, and
at least three, perhaps more, in the vegetable kingdom; and every germ,
from the fi