GOD IN NATURE 181 



teach the same lesson. The leaves of plants are not 

 arranged at random, but in a series of curiously-related 

 spirals, differing in different plants, but always the 

 same in the same species, and regulated by different 

 laws. Similar definiteness regulates the ramification 

 of plants, which depends primarily on the arrange 

 ment of the leaves. The angle of ramification of the 

 veins of the leaf is settled for each species of plant ; 

 so are the numbers of parts in the flower and the 

 angular arrangement of these parts. 



It is the same in the animal kingdom, such 

 numbers as five, six, eight, ten being selected to 

 determine the parts in particular animals and portions 

 of animals. Once settled, these numbers are won 

 derfully permanent in geological time. The first 

 known land reptiles appearing in the Carboniferous 

 period have five toes : these appear in the earliest 

 known species in the lowest, as already stated, 

 beds of the Carboniferous. Their predecessors, the 

 fishes, had numerous fin-rays ; but when limbs for 

 locomotion on land were contrived the number five 

 was adopted as the typical one. It still exists in the 

 five toes and fingers of man himself. From these, as 

 is well known, our decimal notation is derived. It 

 did not originate in any special fitness of the number 

 ten, but in the fact that men began to reckon by 

 counting their ten fingers. Thus the decimal system 

 of arithmetic, with all that follows it, was settled 

 millions of years ago, in the Carboniferous period, 



