IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



185 



of 



ion 

 ach 

 arts 

 t of' 

 ng- 

 :ted 

 and 

 liiim- 

 gical 

 ir in 

 nor- 



mally five toes; these appear in the earliest 

 known species in the lowest beds of the Car- 

 boniferous. Their predecessors, the fishes, had 

 numerous fin-rays ; but when limbs for locomo- 

 tion on land were contrived, the number five was 

 adopted as the typical one. It still persists in 

 the five toes and fingers of man himself. From 

 these, as is well known, our decimal notation is 

 derived. It did not originate in any special fit- 

 ness of the number ten, but in the fact that men 

 began to reckon by counting their ten fingers. 

 Thus the decimal system of arithmetic, with all 

 that follows from it, was settled millions of years 

 ago, in the Carboniferous period, either by cer- 

 tain low-browed and unintelligent batrachians 

 or by their Maker. 



2. Nature presents to us very remarkable 

 revelations of dissimilar and widely-separated 

 matters and forces. I have referred to the nu- 

 merical arrangement of the leaves of plants; 

 but the leaf itself, in its structure and func- 

 tions, is one of the most remarkable things in 

 nature. Composed of layers of loosely-placed 

 living cells with air-spaces between them ; en- 

 closed above and below with a transparent 

 epidermis, the spaces between the cells com- 

 municating with the atmosphere without by 



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