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in admiring them and giving the suited praise for their exist- 
ence, is performing in so far his right part in nature. 
Christ has said, “ Consider the lilies, how they grow ; they 
toil not, they spin not, and yet I say unto you, that Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” 
Harmony in Nature. 
“The man that hath no music in himself” is set down by 
our great poet as very low in the scale of humanity. “ Let 
no such man be trusted.”* No doubt there is truth in this 
estimate, founded on a keen though rather shrewd observation 
of mankind. A deficiency in these finer perceptions is in so 
far a loss of the original dignity of man’s nature, and places 
the individual more out of fellowship with the works of God. 
It is of little use pointing out to such the testimony which the 
general harmony of nature bears to its being the result of one 
Mind, and that one Mind the source of all beauty. 
One aspect of this general truth was pointed out to me first 
by my late friend Berthold Seemann, who refers to the subject 
in his “Historical Notice” prefixed to the Flora Vitiensis . f 
He describes the banks of the rivers and rivulets in the islands 
of Fiji as densely crowded with vegetation, amongst which are 
found several species peculiar to these localities, all of which 
would have to be classed physiognomically with Humboldt’s 
“ willow form,” a set of plants which, unaffected by the occa- 
sional rising and turbulence of the streams, not only have the 
same kind of foliage, habit, and mode of growth as genuine 
willows, but evidently serve the same purpose in Nature’s 
economy, — that of protecting and keeping together the river 
banks, though they are not related to the genus salix. One 
of these is indeed a fig (see Plate LXYII.). .Seemann says : — 
“ The frequency of plants belonging to the willow form on 
river banks in all countries of the world appears to have been 
dealt with first by Humboldt in his Ansichten derNatur. These 
outer resemblances between different species which have no 
organic relationship have played us botanists many a trick, 
and have been the cause of some otherwise incomprehensible 
synonyms in our systematic works by really good botanists 
relying too implicitly upon them — resemblances to which the 
term ‘mimicry in nature’ has been applied. I have objected 
to this term, because in applying it, either in zoology or in 
botany, the whole question hero cropping up is prejudged, it 
being assumed that (1) organisms have the power to mimic 
* Merchant of Venice. 
t Flora Vitiensis , p. xir. 
