2 4 THE OLIVE LEAF. CIIAI-. 



vegetable and animal productions, were distributed in 

 geological time, as we find them distributed in geo- 

 graphical space. Each element has counterparts of 

 every other element. The sea repeats the mountains 

 and valleys of the earth in its waves, the rivers in its 

 currents, and the trees and flowers in its ocean gardens. 

 Animals resemble plants ; plants possess analogies with 

 animals. The globule of blood and the rolling planet 

 are one. BufTon said that there was but one animal ; 

 and Faraday expressed his conviction that in the end 

 there will be found but one element with two polarities. 

 Owing to the imperfection and limitation of our powers, 

 we are obliged to deal with fragments of the universe, 

 and to exaggerate their differences. But the more pro- 

 found and varied our study of the objects of nature, the 

 more remarkable do we find their resemblances. And 

 we cannot occupy ourselves with the smallest province 

 of science without speedily becoming sensible of its 

 intercommunication with all other provinces. The 

 snowflake leads us to the sun. The study of a lichen or 

 moss becomes a key that opens up the great temple of 

 organic life. If we could understand, as Tennyson pro- 

 foundly says, what a little flower growing in the crevice 

 of a wayside wall is, root and all, and all in all, we should 

 know what God and man are. And the same unbroken 

 gradation or continuity which we trace throughout all 

 the parts and objects of our own world, pervades and 

 embraces the whole physical universe so far, at least, 

 as our knowledge of it at present extends. By the 

 wonderful discoveries of spectrum analysis, we find the 



