RELATIVE GEOLOGICAL ANTIQUITY OF TREES. 149 



Hence it is the object of vegetable matter to form from in- 

 organic matter, organic molecules, as food for animals." 



In a similar manner, probably, originated in old Ocean the 

 first plants. Scarcely were the solid parts of the earth created, 

 than the procreative power of its organic germs was called forth. 

 Vegetable life was at first entirely aquatic, then amphibious, 

 and lastly terrestrial. It was the same with the animal world : 

 first fishes, then swamp reptiles and aquatic birds, and lastly 

 land and air life mammalia and man. So plants must have 

 been created before herbivorous animals, and these last before 

 those carnivorous races which prey upon them, and the whole 

 of whose habits, instincts, and organs are most wonderfully 

 and beautifully adapted for their destruction as sources of 

 food. Lastly appeared man, Omnivorous. So, from the first 

 plant to man-creation is one continuous chain ; and the pres- 

 ent glorious and variegated vegetable carpet which covers 

 the earth, with its beautiful flowers and grand forest trees, is 

 only a fragment of former plant-creations which have been 

 conducted on plan and system by a Providence whom man- 

 kind must learn to look up to as THE UNIVERSAL FATHER. 

 A proof that, in the whole of Nature, all creatures are con- 

 tinuous and inseparably connected with each other, so that 

 the earth, with all its living forms, constitutes one entire 

 whole, in which each plant and animal has its place, which 

 it necessarily occupies and fills. 



It seems therefore plain that the earth, with its atmospheric 

 covering, its continents and ever-sounding seas, with all their 

 rich variety of life, is as much an organism as any tree on 

 its surface. There is the same continuity and mutual depen- 

 dency of all its parts, the same system of perpetual change 

 on its surface, and the same record of its progress and past 

 changes preserved in its interior. 



Eeader, if you cultivate a garden, as I hope you do, you 

 can see the beginning and end of the lowly plants growing 

 around your dwelling, and you know that they put forth a 

 regular cycle of organic appendages, of leaves, flowers, and 

 fruits ; and it is the same with the forest trees, whose life- 

 history covers a longer period of time. Now if the cycle of 



