THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 129 



round the stalk, in which water remains after a shower. Now 

 the pitcher, as this is called, is not a new organ, but simply the 

 metamorphosis of a leaf. 



It is thus proved, with regard to the constituent beings of 

 large sections of the animal kingdom, that they are bound up 

 in a fundamental unity, however various in degree of endow- 

 ment and in the purposes which they serve in the world. 

 They may be said to stand in a connexion resembling that in 

 which the planets are placed by the third law of Kepler. And 

 the inference with regard to their origin is the same. Pre- 

 cisely as it is impossible to suppose a separate exertion or fiat 

 of Almighty Power for the formation of the Earth, wrought up 

 as it is in a complex dynamical connexion, first with Venus on 

 the one hand and Mars on the other, and secondly with all the 

 other members of the system, so is it impossible to conceive 

 the same power using particular means for the production of 

 a particular animal species, an individualized fraction, as it 

 now appears, in a vast system which would not be complete 

 without it, and into whose adjacent parts it melts by the finest 

 shadings. Supposing, for a moment, that each species had 

 been distinct in its origin, these shadings would have been un- 

 necessary ; and there would at least have been a strong pro- 

 bability against a unity of organization being adopted as part 

 of the plan. In that case, abortive or rudimentary organs 

 must have been considered as a kind of blemish the thing of 

 all others most irreconcilable with that idea of perfection 

 which a general view of nature irresistibly attributes to its 

 Author. If, on the other hand, we admit that the animal 

 kingdom was framed under the operation of a general law, we 

 see in the shadings and the organic unity something not only 

 harmonious with, but essential to, the system. Rudimentary 

 organs, too, appear but as harmless peculiarities of develop- 

 ment, and interesting evidences of the manner in which the 

 Divine Author has been pleased to work. 



It must be easy to see how this class of facts bears on the 

 great question. Organisms we know to have been produced, 

 not at once, but in the course of a vast series of ages : here we 

 now see that they are not a group of individually entire 

 things accidentally associated, but parts of great masses, 

 nicely connected, and integral in their respective totalities. 

 Time, and a succession of forms in gradation and affinity, be- 

 come elements in the idea of organic creation. It must be 

 seen that the whole phenomena thus pass into strong analogy 



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