ORIGIN OF PLANTS. 227 



one species, nor yet of creatures developed from these, under 

 those electric or chemical laws of which the grand character- 

 istic is invariability of result. The vast variety of its exist- 

 ences speak not of the operation of unvarying laws, that re- 

 present, in their uniformity of result, the unchangeableness 

 of the Divinity, but of creative acts, that exemplify the infi- 

 nity of His resources. 



Let the reader yet further remark, if he has followed me 

 through these preliminary observations, what is really in- 

 volved in the hypothesis of the author of the " Vestiges," 

 regarding the various floras common to the British islands 

 and the Continent. If it was upon his scheme that England, 

 Ireland, and the mainland of Europe came to possess an iden- 

 tical flora, production de novo and by repetition of the same 

 species must have taken place in thousands of instances along 

 the shores of each island and of the mainland. His hypothe- 

 sis demands that the sea-weed on the coast of Ireland should 

 have been developed, first through lower, and then higher 

 forms, into thousands of terrestrial plants, — that exactly the 

 same process of development from sea-weed into terrestrial 

 plants of the same species should have taken place on the 

 coast of England, and again on the coasts of the Continent 

 generally, — and that identically the same vegetation should 

 have been originated in this way in at least three great centres. 

 And if plants of the same species could have had three dis- 

 tinct centres of organization and development, why not three 

 hundred, or three thousand, or three hundred thousand ? Nor 

 will it do to attempt escaping from the diflficulty by alleging 

 that there is the groundwork in the case of at least a common 

 marine vegetation to start from ; and that thus, if we have 

 not properly the existence of the direct hereditary tie among 

 the various individuals of each species, we may yet recogni&e 

 at least a sort of collateral relationship among them, derived 

 from the relationship of their marine ancestry. For relation- 



