TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 21 



the organization of life to be accommodated to the 

 previously established laws of nature. But we 

 are not forced upon any such mode of conception, 

 or upon any decision between such suppositions : 

 since, for the purpose of our argument, the con- 

 sequence of either view is the same. There is 

 an adaptation somewhere or other, on either sup- 

 position. There is account taken of one part of 

 the system in framing the other : and the mind 

 which took such account can be no other than 

 that of the Intelligent Author of the universe. 

 When indeed we come to see the vast number, 

 the variety, the extent, the interweaving, the 

 reconciling of such adaptations, we shall readily 

 allow, that all things are so moulded upon and 

 locked into each other, connected by such sub- 

 tilty and profundity of design, that we may well 

 abandon the idle attempt to trace the order of 

 thought in the mind of the Supreme Ordainer. 



CHAPTER I. 

 The Length of the Year. 



A YEAR is the most important and obvious of the 

 periods which occur in the organic, and especially 

 in the vegetable world. In this interval of time 

 the cycle of most of the external influences which 



