32 THE PRESENT. 



plants as varied in their individual forms as they are nume- 

 rically abundant, yet He has thought fit to restrict Himself, 

 as it were, to a few types and models, and, humanly speak- 

 ing, like a skilful inventor, to produce an almost endless 

 variety from the co-adaptation of a few simple elements, 

 and complexity of design by the elimination of a few primal 

 patterns. As innumerable hues can be produced from a 

 few primitive colours, as endless strains of music flow from 

 the touches of a few simple chords, or as the ideas of all 

 times and nations can be expressed by the combinations of 

 some twenty or thirty letter-sounds ; so in the structure 

 of plants and animals every variety of form, every conceiv- 

 able adaptation of structure, proceeds from the modification 

 of a few elementary forms and types in nature. Without 

 this uniformity of plan and design, the study of nature by 

 man's limited faculties would have been impossible. Be- 

 wildered with variety without design, and lost in complex- 

 ity without order, the human intellect could never have 

 arrived at any true conception of Nature or of Nature's 

 laws ; could never have woven those chains of reason 

 wherewith it may be said to have linked earth to heaven, 

 and affiliated the created to the uncreated Creator. But 

 inasmuch as God is a God of law and of order, and clearly 

 me'ant those laws and orders to be intelligible to our limited 

 comprehensions, so He has considerately narrowed the bounds 

 of creative design, and made creation a theme at once fitted 

 to exercise our reason, and to draw forth our reverence 

 and love. In studying the vegetable world, therefore, the 

 botanist finds that every diversity of form and structure 

 proceeds from the elimination of a simple CELL, and that 

 this cell-growth lies at the basis of all vegetable develop- 

 ment. He also finds that the primary structural form into 

 which it is developed is a LEAF or leaf-like organ ; and that 

 this leaf -like organ manifests itself variously rising from a 



