MAEITIME PLANTS. 165 



evidence of a peculiarity in which may be traced 

 the purpose and design of creative foresight. The 

 members of the vegetable kingdom are endowed 

 with a power of accommodating or adapting them- 

 selves to circumstances and localities, and vicissi- 

 tudes of soil and climate ; a power which it may 

 easily be conceived is necessary to the preservation 

 of the species, and perhaps we may add, without 

 being far from the truth, in order that they may 

 minister in an improved, or at least a more useful 

 and available form, to the wants of man, some- 

 what in the same way in which various animals 

 which have been domesticated are rendered use- 

 ful by their acquired habits and instincts. It 

 is important also to notice, on this very interesting 

 subject, that the same creative power which gave 

 to the vegetable kingdom this peculiar adapta- 

 bility, has also marked out a limit to it, as in the 

 case of the animal creation ; so that the cabbage, 

 the cauliflower, the brocoli, and the seakale of the 

 kitchen garden, if left by the gardener to grow 

 wild, will not continue to exhibit the monstrous 

 forms into which they have been driven, but will 

 return to the simple and natural conditions which 

 they display in their native abodes. 



In addition to the numerous plants and flowers 

 above referred to, there are others of larger di- 

 mensions which add in no small degree to the 

 amenity of the sea-shores where they occur. A 

 few of these we shall now mention. 



The Tree Mallow (Lavatera arborea) grows in 

 rocky places, attains the altitude of from six to 



M 3 



