332 



creations of an intermediate and doubtful character, which partake of 

 both extremes, and so completely connect them, as to render it alto- 

 gether uncertain to which they most truly belong." So that if it once 

 be admitted (and no true naturalist can doubt it) that every natural 

 being passes into some other by insensible gradations, it must also be 

 admitted that no real limits can be found between one group of such 

 beings and another ; and that consequently absolute distinctions be- 

 tween such groups can have no existence in Nature. 



So many evidences of the truth of this doctrine are daily forcing 

 themselves on the mind of every naturalist, that in many cases he 

 finds it utterly impossible to frame any verbal definition of a group to 

 which there shall be no exception, and he is virtually constrained to 

 recognize the theory of gradation, at whatever inconvenience, or how- 

 ever repugnant to his preconceived notions. He finds that it is not 

 confined to species alone, but that it also extends throughout all 

 groups above species. How else can we reconcile such opposite ex- 

 tremes of development as we find in every combination, whether of 

 species, of genera, of orders or classes ? Nothing, for example, can be 

 more unlike than the oak, which for centuries has braved the storms 

 of winter, and the minute, microscopic fungus, which, as it springs 

 into being as it were instantaneously and without warning, as quickly 

 perishes, and "the place thereof knoweth it no more." Every group 

 of plants furnishes striking examples of these extremes of develop- 

 ment. Among Endogens we have palms, plantains, and tree-like 

 liliaceous plants, the giants of their class, strikingly contrasted with 

 the floating Lerana, which has no distinction of leaf or stem, and 

 bearing flowers, consisting simply of one carpel and two stamens, 

 without calyx or corolla, and seated in minute slits in the edges of 

 the frond. In the Acrogens we find the tropical tree ferns, with 

 trunks forty feet high, and mosses, some of which are so exceedingly 

 minute, that their parts are utterly undistinguishable by the naked 

 eye. Among the grasses we find the bamboos, growing to the height 

 of a hundred feet, and the exquisite little Knappia agrostidea, scarcely 

 half an inch in height. The genus Salix presents us with Salix alba, 

 a tree thirty feet high, and the diminutive Salix herbacea, half a dozen 

 perfect plants of which, roots, stems, flowers and all, may be laid upon 

 a common octavo page. And, to adduce no other instances, " the 

 genus Ficus," as Lindley mentions, " contains some species creeping 

 on the ground like diminutive herbaceous plants, and others rising 

 into the air to the height of 150 feet, overspreading with the arms of 

 their colossal trunks a sufficient space of ground to protect a multi- 



