DESIGN IN THE ORGANIC WORLD. 421 



tion, doubt that every part of it had been constructed with a view 

 to a preconceived purpose, whatever he might suppose that pur- 

 pose to be ? An iUiterate savage who knows nothing about the 

 meaning of Times newspapers, would none the less (if he had a 

 capacity for reasoning upon the matter at all) recognize an intelli- 

 gent purpose in the construction of the machine. But it is by him 

 who knows something of the difficulties which baffled all previous 

 attempts at printing from a continuously revolving cylinder, and 

 can thus appreciate the beautiful simplicity of the method by 

 which these have been overcome, and by which the machine has 

 been brought to its present perfection, that the greatest admiration 

 will be felt for the ability with which so many separate and dis- 

 similar arrangements have been brought into consentaneous and 

 mutually related action, so as to concur towards a common result, 

 which the machine would altogether fail to work out, if any one 

 of its processes were to suffer derangement. 



Now, in the first of these cases we have a very close parallel to 

 those forms of Vegetable and Animal life, which are characterized 

 by the Biologist as of "low organization ;" by which is meant that 

 there is comparatively little differentiation in the structure of their 

 several parts, which are often repeated almost without limit, per- 

 forming actions identically the same. And yet in these, as in the 

 collocation of the individual fractures which have shaped out a flint 

 implement, we see evidence of a plan, in the orderly arrangement 

 of these parts, and in the adaptiveness of their combined action to 

 the well-being of the organism as a whole. Look, for example, at 

 a sea-anemone in the act of feeding ; and see how its multiple ten- 

 tacles attach themselves to a piece of fish, or to the shell of a 

 mussel or periwinkle, and draw it by their united contraction 

 into the creature's stomach. The adaptation is not less perfect, 

 because the action is so simple ; nothing could be conceived 

 more suitable to the conditions under which the sea-anemone 

 lives ; and the multiplication of similar parts, so disposed as to 

 enable them to work together to a common end, seems to me as 

 clear an evidence of "designed" adaptation in the sea-anemone, 

 as it is admitted to l)e in the " flint implement." But, as we 

 ascend the scale of animal life, we find this repetition of similar 

 parts giving place to differentiation, alike in structure and in 



