THE VEGETABLE WORLD. 293 



ceeding to the highest members of the foregoing, in such 

 a manner that they at least repeat its principal type ; nay, 

 we may even say more than this : if both genera and 

 species, or even families of plants, have disappeared from 

 the earth, there does not exist even in the oldest remains, 

 any peculiar great group, a Form of plants constituting as it 

 were a stage of development of the vegetable world, which 

 has not its representative also exhibited in the Flora of the 

 present world. 



This view, that the whole fulness of the vegetable 

 world has been gradually developed out of a single cell 

 and its descendants, by gradual formation of varieties, 

 which became stereotyped into species, and then, in like 

 manner, became the producers of new forms, is at least 

 quite as possible as any other, and is perhaps more 

 probable and correspondent than any other, since it carries 

 back the Absolutely Inexplicable, namely, the production of 

 an Organic Being, into the very narrowest limits which can 

 be imagined. 



At the close of all this series of developments, Man first 

 entered in a way which we cannot explain into the circle of 

 the earth's inhabitants, and thus divided the foregoing 

 series of changes, as the Primeval history of the vegetable 

 world, from the succeeding, the history in Time. The 

 boundary line is not very clear, and an error of from 10 to 

 20,000 years, in the attempt to define the epoch, is very 

 possible and even probable, yet people have been foolish 

 enough to devote themselves to such inquiries, even as 

 there have been madmen who have reckoned the year, 

 month, day and hour, in which God made the world. 



From the hand of Nature, Man received the inheritance 

 prepared for him, the Vegetable and Animal Worlds, the 

 Dead matters and their Forces ; and how has he managed 



