28 THE CHRISTIAN NATURALIST. 



a bountiful Creator, none perhaps is more wonderful 

 than the care which has been taken to preserve the 

 vital principle in seeds. It is well known that every 

 plant must at length degenerate and perish if its mode 

 of propagation were confined to that of cuttings 

 and suckers, not to mention that what are called 

 annuals and herbaceous plants, as the different varieties 

 of corn, for instance, could never have been successfully 

 cultivated by such means. We have only however to 

 revert to the history of the deluge, to see how a world 

 could be again replenished and restored through the 

 instrumentality of those seeds, which were doubtless 

 imbedded in the soil when that catastrophe came upon 

 it ; for it is hardly possible to imagine that any thing 

 of its previous vegetation could have remained amidst 

 the violent convulsions and wide- spreading desolations 

 which attended such an event. And yet we find that 

 within the short space of seven days from the first drying 

 up of the earth, the dove was enabled to return to the 

 Ark with an olive leaf. Whether this was the produc- 

 tion of a seedling,* or whether it was the new sprout 



* Most probably tbis was tbe fact, for tbere seems little reason 

 to believe that any plants of the olive tribe could have retained 

 their vitality during the long submersion they must have 



