LEADING PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE. 11 



and from the regular-flowered crowfoot to the distorted monka-liood by a series 

 graduated in like manner. 



16. Natuea non saltus facit, said Linnseus, in evident allusion to this beau- 

 tiful principle, which will constitute one of the most interesting themes of botanical 

 study. 



IV. Accomodated Poems or organs is a phrase applied to another principle 

 in the Divine plan, the reverse of the first. This principle appears in the adaptation 

 of different organs in different species to one common use ; of which there are many 

 tamiliar 



18. Examples. Thus, the slender vine requires support. Now it throws out a 

 lendril for this very purpose, grasping whatever object it may reach, as in the grape. 

 Again, the prolonged leaf-stalk answers the same end, aa in Clematis. Again, the 

 supple stem itself, by its own coils supports itself, as in the hop ; and, lastly, ad- 

 ventitious rootlets in the ivy. 



19. Another illustration. Reproduction is the general of6oo of the seed; 

 but tills end is also accomplished, in different species, by nearly every other organ, 

 by buds, bulblets, bulbs, tubers, cuttings, scions, and even leaves. 



20. Another. This principle is also traced in the nutritious deposits of plants, 

 wliich are generally made in the fruit ; but often the root serves as the reservoir in- 

 stead, or even the stem. And in case of the fruit, the rich deposit is now found in 

 the pericarp of the peach, the calyx of the apple, the receptacle of the strawberry, 

 the cotyledons of the almond, the bracts, flower-stalks, &c., of the pine-applo. Thus 

 God's boundless resources of skill can accompMsh either one purpose in a thousand 

 different ways, or a thousand different purposes by a single organ. 



21. Abebsted Torms. Tills principle, demanding a wider range of generaliza- 

 tion than either of the foregoing, we state rather as a hypothesis, that the student 

 may hereafter test its probability by his own observations. The flowering plants 

 which clothe the earth in such numbers, constituting the apparent vegetable world, 

 are in truth but a minor part of it in respect to numbers. Numerous tribes, of lower 

 rank, embracing thousands of species, reach far down the scale, beyond the utmost 

 limits of the microscope. Now a principle of analogy seems to pervade these ranks, 

 called the principlS of arrested forms, binding all together in one consistent whole, 

 proving that for the vast realm of vegetation there was but one plan and one origin. 



22. The Hypothesis st.med. The successive tribes of vegetation, beginning 

 with the lowest, have eacli their type or analogue in the successive. stages of em- 

 bryonic growth in the highest tribe. 



23. More explicitly: the flowering plant, in the course of its growth from 

 the pollen grain to the completed embryo, passes necessarily through a series of 

 transient forms. Now, suppose the development of tlie plant arrested at each of 

 these stages, so that these transient forms become permanent, we should have a 

 series of organisms analogous to the various tribes of Flowerlesa Plants ; the Pro- 

 tococcus, e. g., an arrested pollen grain ; the Oscillaria, an arrested pollen tube ; and 

 so on up to the Marsillea, whose' organization answers to that of the fuU-fQrmed 

 embryo of the flowering plant. Thus we might truly say of the lower plants that 

 they are the arrested forms of the higher. 



24. Individuality of the Plant. The plant is both material and immaterial. 

 Its form and substance is the material, its life the immateriaL The material com- 

 mences existence as a single cell, and is ever changing. The immaterial gives to 

 that coU its individuality, and fixes inevitably its law of development, so that it 

 arast grow up to become such a plant as it is, and by no possibility any other. 



25. Illustration. The embryonic cell of arose may not differ materially, intho 



