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snow, on the thin soil that covers ice-cliffs, on the burning 
sands of Africa, on tbe parched and rough lava-rocks, in the 
boiling water of mineral springs. On this function of plants 
the life of the whole animal world ultimately depends, and, if 
we rest on the uniformity of nature, has depended through 
all past geological ages. Do we often give its full weight to 
this fact as evidence of a great plan in nature ? Here are the 
two series of animals and plants, standing, on the whole, on 
different planes of existence. For, however much a few 
microscopic animals and plants seem to approach each other, 
any candid reasoner will allow that the vast majority of 
animals, — all the vertebrates, for instance, all the insects, 
all the crustaceans, — occupy an altogether different sphere of 
being from trees, shrubs, and grasses. I repeat, then, here are 
the two series of organisms bound together by one general 
bond, which on further examination resolves itself again into 
myriads of particular bonds between particular plants and 
particular animals. And we are asked to believe that there is 
no prescience, no pre-established harmony, no benevolent care 
in all this ! Supposing the world were developed according 
to blind unconscious forces from a fiery haze, what were the 
chances that plants and animals would have been developed 
pari passu with an accommodating reference to each other’s 
welfare ? The materialist assumes as a matter of course, not 
only that life originated accidentally on this globe, but that 
plants were kind enough to originate themselves, just as they 
were required by animals ! I do not believe any materialistic 
thinker can have realised the monstrous, the incredible hap- 
hazard to which he intrusts the creation of the world. As 
matters actually are, what a spectacle of harmonious adjust- 
ment nature presents between the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms ! Man, of course, interferes with it in civilised 
countries. But who ever landed on an uninhabited island 
without finding a perfect balance between the producing and 
consuming agencies of nature ? 
As yet I have stated the law of the manipulation of the 
inorganic world by plants only generally. Let us go a little 
more into details. If we wish to stand face to face with this 
every-day mystery, we can do so by observing Algce. Many 
of them float freely in the water, and it is obvious that they 
must construct their cell-walls and cell-contents from the 
surrounding element and the gaseous and mineral elements 
which it contains in solution. Carbon dioxide is dissolved in 
all surface water, and so supplies the indispensable carbon, 
and the nitrogen they get from the products of decaying 
organic matter or the nitrates washed from the land. But 
