Aug. 10, 1871 | 
NATURE 
283 

more inexplicable, than the theory that they were each 
and all, with their minute and often imaginary shades of 
But if it be— 
which I cannot allow—what can the theologian say save 
difference, created separately and at once? 

that God’s works are even more wonderful than we always 
believed them to be? As for the theory being impossible, 
who are we that we should limit the power of God? If it 
be said that natural selection is too simple a cause to pro- 
CHINESE MAN AND WOMAN 
duce such fantastic variety, we always knew that God 
works by very simple or seemingly simple means ; that 
the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organi- 
sation of the most simple means.” 
The beauty of many of the clearings in the forests 

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must have made every traveller in the tropics think what 
scenes of surpassing beauty might be created by judicious 
clearing and planting, by helping Nature in a country and 
climate where, even unassisted, she can do so much, and 
where such a profusion of beautiful materials exists to 
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COOLIE AND NEGRO 
work with. Mr. Kingsley remarks that “the plants most 
capable of beautifying any given spot do not always grow 
therein, simply because they have not yet arrived there, as 
may be seen by comparing any wood planted with rhodo- 
dendrons and azaleas with the neighbouring wood in its 
native state. Thus may be obtained somewhat of that 
variety and richness which is wanting everywhere, more 
or less, in the vegetation of our northern zone, only just 
ecovering slowly from the destructive catastrophe of the 
glacial epoch, a richness which, small as it is, vanishes as 
we travel northward, till the drear landscape is sheeted 
more and more with monotonous multitudes of heather, 
