NATURAL THEOLOGY. 381 



upward in quest of its adapted object, and the 

 other downward."* Were this account better 

 verified by experiment than it is, it only shifts the 

 contrivance. It does not disprove the contri- 

 vance ; it only removes it a little further back. 

 Who, to use our author's own language, ''adapted 

 the objects ?" Who gave such a quality to these 

 connate parts, as to be susceptible of different 

 "stimulation;" as to be "excited" each only by 

 its own element, and precisely by that which the 

 success of the vegetation requires ? I say, " which 

 the success of the vegetation requires ;" for the 

 toil of the husbandman w^ould have been in vain, 

 his laborious and expensive preparation of the 

 ground in vain; if the event must, after all, depend 

 upon the position in which the scattered seed was 

 sown. Not one seed out of a hundred would fall 

 in a right direction. 



Our second observation is upon a general pro- 

 perty of climbing plants, which is strictly mecha- 

 nical. In these plants, from each knot or joint, or 

 as botanists call it, axilla, of the plant, issue, close 

 to each other, two shoots, one bearing the flower 

 and fruit, the other drawn out into a wire, a long, 

 tapering, spiral tendril, that twists itself round any 

 thing which lies within its reach. Considering 

 that in this class two purposes are to be provided 

 for, (and together) fructification and support, the 

 fruitage of the plant and the sustentation of the 



* Darwin's Phytologia, p. 144, 



