27G CREATION BY LAW. 



produced such an adjustment. I believe I have 

 shown, however, that such an adjustment is not only 

 possible but inevitable, unless at some point or other 

 we deny the action of those simple laws which we 

 have already admitted to be but the expressions ot 

 existing facts. 



Adaptation brought about ly General Laws. 



It is difficult to find anything like parallel cases in 

 inorganic nature, but that of a river may perhaps 

 illustrate the subject in some degree. Let us suppose 

 a person totally ignorant of Modern Geology to study 

 carefully a great Kiver System. He finds in its 

 lower part, a deep broad channel filled to the brim, 

 flowing slowly through a flat country and carrying 

 out to the sea a quantity of fine sediment. Higher up 

 it branches into a number of smaller channels, flow- 

 ing alternately through flat valleys and between high 

 banks ; sometimes he finds a deep rocky bed with 

 perpendicular walls, carrying the water through a 

 chain of hills; where the stream is narrow he finds 

 it deep, where wide shallow. Further up still, he 

 comes to a mountainous region, with hundreds of 

 streams and rivulets, each with its tributary rills and 

 gullies, collecting the water from every square mile of 

 surface, and every channel adapted to the water that it 

 has to carry. He finds that the bed of every branch, 

 and stream, and rivulet, has a steeper and steeper slope 

 as it approaches its sources, and is thus enabled to 

 carry off the water from heavy rains, and to bear away 



