22O THE GENESIS AND MIGRATIONS OF PLANTS 



served strangely to change some of our preconceived ideas. 

 We must now be prepared to admit that an Eden might exist 

 even in Spitsbergen, that there are possibilities in this old 

 earth of ours which its present condition does not reveal to 

 us; that the present state of the world is by no means the 

 best possible in relation to climate and vegetation ; that there 

 have been and might be again conditions which could con- 

 vert the ice-clad Arctic regions into blooming paradises, and 

 which, at the same time, would moderate the fervent heat of the 

 tropics. We are accustomed to say that nothing is impossible 

 with God ; but how little have we known of the gigantic pos- 

 sibilities which lie hidden under some of the most common of 

 His natural laws. 



Yet these facts have been made the occasion of speculations 

 as to the spontaneous development of plants without any 

 direct creative intervention. It would, from this point of view, 

 be a nice question to calculate how many revolutions of climate 

 would suffice to evolve the first land plant; what are the 

 chances that such plant would be so dealt with by physical 

 changes as to be preserved and nursed into a meagre flora like 

 that of the Upper Silurian or the Jurassic ; how many trans- 

 portations to Greenland would suffice to promote such meagre 

 flora into the rich and abundant forests of the Upper Creta- 

 ceous, and to people the earth with the exuberant vegetation 

 of the early Tertiary. Such problems we may never be able 

 to solve. Probably they admit of no solution, unless we invoke 

 the action of a creative mind, operating through long ages, and 

 correlating with boundless power and wisdom all the energies 

 inherent in inorganic and organic nature. Even then we shall 

 perhaps be able to comprehend only the means by which, after 

 specific types have been created, they may, by the culture of 

 their Maker, be "sported" into new varieties or sub-species, 

 and thus fitted to exist under different conditions, or to occupy 

 higher places in the economy of nature. 



