20 



The law that rules ainmal rules also vegetable nature : the 

 phaenogamous plants present a centre very nearly correspond- 

 ing, in relative value, to vertebrates among animals ; these, again, 

 offer equal scope for subdivision ; and the surrounding vegeta- 

 tions must be those at present termed cryptogamous, which vary 

 as greatly among themselves as they collectively do from the 

 more perfect and central ones : the various tribes of Fungi, 

 Algae, Filices, Musci, &c., possessing wonderfully varied forms 

 and characters, and assuming every size from the gigantic fem of 

 the tropical islands to that almost invisible Mvicor, which seems, 

 by its instantaneous appearance, to be for ever floating in the air, 

 prepared to vegetate wherever it may chance to fall, and has often 

 afforded arguments to those who deny the dictum of omnia ex ovo, 

 and support that of spontaneous reproduction; thus ennobling 

 these almost nonentities, by assigning to them properties which 

 man might pine for in vain, and which cannot be the attributes 

 of dust. 



The centre for each particular group will not always derive that 

 mark of superiority from its size, or intelligence, or beauty, or 

 complicated structure, but from a combination of these qualities, 

 and more particularly from uniting in itself the principal and more 

 decidedly distinguishing characters of the group of which it forms 

 the nucleus, and the gradation will by no means be found to be 

 regular, from the most perfect in the centre to the least perfect on 

 the circumference of minor groups, although I imagine this re- 

 lative position to obtain in the extremes : on the contrary, the 

 approaches towards perfection or imperfection will be infinitely 

 varied, presenting the most complete labyrinth of intricacies 

 that imagination can conceive, yet all disposed with that beautiful 

 and wonderful regularity which proclaims more loudly than words, 

 that " the natural system is the plan of creation itself, the work 



of an ALL-WISE ALL-POWERFUL DeITY."* 



* Horse Entomologicse, preface, p. xiii. 



