CEEATION Z?F LAW. 275 



dale. I have carefully measured the proboscis of a 

 specimen of Macrosila cluentius from South America, in 

 the collection of the British Museum, and find it to 

 be nine inches and a quarter long ! One from tropical 

 Africa (Macrosila morganii) is seven inches and a 

 half. A species having a proboscis two or three inches 

 longer could reach the nectar in the largest flowers 

 of Angraecum sesquipedale, whose nectaries vary in 

 length from ten to fourteen inches. That such a moth 

 exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted ; and 

 naturalists who visit that island should search for it 

 with as much confidence as Astronomers searched for 

 the planet Neptune, and I venture to predict they 

 will be equally successful ! 



Now, instead of this beautiful self-acting adjust- 

 ment, the opposing theory is, that the Creator of the 

 Universe, by a direct act of his "Will, so disposed 

 the natural forces influencing the growth of this one 



C5 O 



species of plant as to cause its nectary to increase to 

 this enormous length; and at the same time, by an 

 equally special act, determined the flow of nourish- 

 ment in the organization of the moth, so as to cause 

 its proboscis to increase in exactly the same propor- 

 tion, having previously so constructed the AngraBCum 

 that it could only be maintained in existence by the 

 agency of this moth. But what proof is given or 

 suggested that this was the mode by which the ad- 

 justment took place ? None whatever, except a feel- 

 ing that there is an adjustment of a delicate kind, 

 and an inability to see how known causes could have 



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