30 TERRESTRIAL ADAPTATIONS. 



adjustment in the forms and positions of its 

 wheels ; yet no one would accept it as an expla- 

 nation of the origin of such forms and positions, 

 that the watch would not go if these were other 

 than they are. If the objector were to suppose 

 that plants were originally fitted to years of vari- 

 ous lengths, and that such only have survived to 

 the present time, as had a cycle of a length equal 

 to our present year, or one which could be accom- 

 modated to it ; we should reply, that the assump- 

 tion is too gratuitous and extravagant to require 

 much consideration ; but that, moreover, it does 

 not remove the difficulty. How came the func- 

 tions of plants to be periodical at all ? Here is, 

 in the first instance, an agreement in the form of 

 the laws that prevail in the organic and in the 

 inorganic world, which appears to us a clear 

 evidence of design in their Author. And the 

 same kind of reply might be made to any similar 

 objection to our argument. Any supposition 

 that the universe has gradually approximated to 

 that state of harmony among the operations of its 

 different parts, of which we have one instance in 

 the coincidence now under consideration, would 

 make it necessary for the objector to assume a 

 previous state of things preparatory to this per- 

 fect correspondence. And in this preparatory 

 condition we should still be able to trace the ru- 

 diments of that harmony, for which it was pro- 

 posed to account : so that even the most unbounded 



