Now this reasoning appeared, doubtless, very triumphant to the worthy Doctor: and yet a very little acquaintance with physiology would have taught him that he was enunciating an absurdity. The very supposition which he considers as self-refuting, is an indubitable physiological fact. I have abundantly shown, in the text, that the _cells which compose_ the tree or the animal are as undeniable evidences of past processes as the concentric cylinders of timber, or the superposed layers of bone and scale. [103] I here assume the life-history of the globe to be represented by a straight line, because I cannot _prove_ it to be a circle. I cannot even _imagine_ its circularity. I do not mean the possibility;--I can imagine _that_: but the _mode_ I cannot conceive. This, however, does not disprove the possibility. If man's science extended not beyond the accumulated observations of his own life, he would probably be quite incompetent to conceive how the life-history of such a tree as the Oak could be a circle; if he had never seen more than one individual, which was a tree when he was born, and continued to flourish till his death. [104] The existence of Coprolites--the fossilized excrement of animals--has been considered a more than ordinarily triumphant proof of real pre-existence. Would it not be closely parallel with the presence of faeces in the intestines of an animal at the moment of creation? Yet this appears to me demonstrable. It may seem at first sight ridiculous, and will probably be represented so; but truth is truth. I have already proved that blood must have been in the arteries and veins of the newly-created Man (_vide_ p. 276, _supra_), and that blood presupposes chyle and chyme; but what became of the indigestible residuum of the chyme, when the chyle was separated from it? Would it not, as a matter of course, be found in the intestines? If the principle is true, that the created organism was exactly what it would have been had it reached that condition by the ordinary course of nature, then faecal residua must have been in the intestines as certainly as chyle in the lacteals, or blood in the capillaries. [105] _Blackwood_; April, 1849; p. 412. [106] Strictly speaking, the current is a lagging behind of the water, which cannot keep pace with the speed communicated to the solid crust of the globe at its equatorial regions. The trade-wind is owing to the same cause. [107] Philos. Trans. for 1802; p. 498. [108] Beitrage, p. 152. [109] Dr. A. Braun, On the Veg. Indiv. [110] See _ante_, p. 233. [111] Fauna Littor. Norveg.; i. 47. * * * * * MARINE NATURAL HISTORY CLASS.