ON CORNISH CLIFFS. 211 



name. This fern, too, is lovely in its way, 

 with its branching leaflets and its rich glossy- 

 green hue. Yet it owes its shape just as 

 truly to the balance of external and internal 

 forces acting upon it as does the Cornish 

 coast-line. How comes it then that in the 

 one case we instinctively regard the beauty 

 as accidental, while in the other we set it 

 down to a deliberate aesthetic intent ? I 

 think because, in the first case, we can 

 actually see the forces at work, while in the 

 second they are so minute and so gradual in 

 their action as to escape the notice of all but 

 trained observers. This fern grows in the 

 shape that I see, because its ancestors have 

 been slowly moulded into such a form by the 

 whole group of circumstances directly or in- 

 directly affecting them in all their past life ; 

 and the germ of the complex form thus pro- 

 duced was impressed by the parent plant 

 upon the spore from which this individual 

 fern took its birth. Over yonder I see a 

 great dock-leaf ; it grows tall and rank above 



