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" medals of creation," every plant and animal, and 

 every part of each 5 was the sequel of historical events 

 running back to the beginning. Then men began to 

 leave the mad hunt for something new and rare, and, 

 turning to the everyday forms about them, seemed to 

 see an interrogation point in every bone and sinew of 

 every animal they met. They forgot to hunt for new 

 birds when they began watching the marvelous trans- 

 formation of a hen's egg into a chicken. Instead of 

 nature being full of paradoxes, a museum of curiosi- 

 ties, each of which rivaled its neighbors in grotesque- 

 ness, with seemingly no purpose in existence except 

 to excite the wonder of men, they found they had 

 been looking at the wrong side of a tapestry, as it 

 were, and it only needed a change in the point of 

 view to see nature revealed as a beautiful de- 

 sign, and all the parts that, considered by themselves, 

 seemed so grotesque, to be but necessary parts of one 

 figure. They found enough to make them believe 

 that every form in nature was a response to the slow 

 action of the laws and forces to which had been com- 

 mitted the working out of the design. And so to- 

 day men value forms, not because tliey are new 

 or old, but only as they add to a better understanding 

 of the design and purpose of nature as a whole. To- 

 day men are studying the forms of nature not alone 

 for thfi.iiselves, but for light on the laws and forces 



