CREATION BY LAW. 275 
dale. I have carefully measured the proboscis of a 
specimen of Macrosila cluentius from South America, in 
the collection of the British Museum, and find it to 
be nine inches and a quarter long! One from tropical 
Africa (Macrosila morganii) is seven inches and a 
half. A species having a proboscis two or three inches 
longer could reach the nectar in the largest flowers 
of Angrecum sesquipedale, whose nectaries vary in 
length from ten to fourteen inches. That such a moth 
exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted ; and 
naturalists who visit that island should search for it 
with as much confidence as Astronomers searched for 
the planet Neptune,—and I venture to predict they 
will be equally successful ! 
Now, instead of this beautiful self-acting adjust- 
ment, the opposing theory is, that the Creator of the 
Universe, by a direct act of his Will, so disposed 
the natural forces influencing the growth of this one 
species of plant as to cause its nectary to increase to 
this enormous length; and at the same time, by an 
equally special act, determined the flow of nourish- 
ment in the organization of the moth, so as to cause 
its proboscis to increase in exactly the same propor- 
tion, having previously so constructed the Angraecum 
that it could only be maintained in existence by the 
agency of this moth. But what proof is given or 
suggested that this was the mode by which the ad- 
justment took place? None whatever, except a feel- 
ing that there is an adjustment of a delicate kind, 
and an inability to see how known causes could have 
T 2 
