330 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



A little difficulty was at first experienced in applying 

 the law to the group of asteroids ; but this difficulty no 

 longer exists, and we now know this wonderful law to be 

 so exact and uniform in its application that, before the dis- 

 covery of the planet Neptune, the botanist in his garden 

 could have predicted its existence and its place in the 

 heavens with greater precision than the French astronomer 

 in his observatory. Moreover, an examination of this se- 

 ries of fractions renders it impossible that any planet should 

 exist exterior to Neptune, as his periodic revolution corre- 

 sponds to the beginning of the series ; though an indefinite 

 number of planets may exist within the orbit of Mercury, 

 inasmuch as the planets lying in that direction correspond 

 to the indefinite continuation of the series. This corre- 

 spondence also harmonizes beautifully with the cosmical 

 theory of La Place and Sir William Herschel, which has 

 been explained in the fourth chapter of this work. As- 

 tronomers will therefore take notice, and not be found 

 planet-hunting in the deserts of space beyond the orbit of 

 Neptune. In the other direction, the future discovery of 

 an intra-mercurial planet is both possible and probable. 

 Certain it is that presumption sides with Lescarbault in his 

 claim to such a discovery. 



Who shall explain what mysterious virtue belongs to 

 the succession of values furnished by the leaf-arrangements 

 of the plant, that exactly the same succession of values 

 should be inscribed upon its humble stem and entered 

 among the ordinations of planetary systems ? How many 

 millions of chances against the supposition of a blind coin- 

 cidence through a series of terms so extended ! Premedi- 

 tated atheism alone could fail to read the sentiment so 

 written at once in the soft bloom of the rose and the super- 

 nal light of the stars — " These are the works of one Omni- 

 present Intelligence." 



