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stated above, with perhaps wearisome reiteration. If this is 
not a designed result, it is a very lucky accident for Theists 
and Sceptics alike. In the next place, the formation of soil 
is obviously due to vegetables. Strip the world, in imagina- 
tion, of its plant-life, and see what a waste it would become. 
Its present fertility is the result of the life and death of 
countless generations of plants which have gradually enriched 
the debris of rocks with organic materials. Another secondary 
end to be noticed in plants is their adaptation to be the 
dwelling-places as well as to supply the food of many animals. 
Whole genera are known which are exclusively arboreal. 
Even among mammals we have monkeys, sloths, fruit-bats, 
opossums. Vast multitudes of birds are solely at home on 
trees, as parrots and lories. Above all, the insect world 
affords the most astounding attachment to plants. Insects 
are so localised, as it were, that in a great tree the bark, the 
wood, the leaves, the flowers give food and shelter to distinct 
tribes. Out of this unbounded field I will only give one fact. 
The Butterfly, when seeking to deposit her eggs, always 
chooses the plant on which the caterpillars are to feed when 
they emerge. Perhaps many of my hearers could not point 
out in a hedge the two Buckthorns, or Rhamni ; but the 
Brimstone Butterfly ( Gonepteryx Rhamni ), we are told, selects 
them, and them alone, with unerring accuracy as the guardians 
of her eggs. 
9. I shall now pass on to another great purpose which 
can be traced throughout the Vegetable Kingdom— that ot 
Reproduction. The proofs of pre-ordained contrivances, of 
processes brought to bear upon one end, are here very striking. 
According to Hartmann, a final cause involves four stages — 
(1) conception of the end; (2) conception of the means; 
(3) realisation of the means; (4) realisation of the end. The 
final effect must be regarded as imaged in some way before- 
hand. This analysis applies admirably to reproduction in the 
vegetable kingdom. First, a distinct end is clearly visible, — 
that of continuing the species. Means are adopted for securing 
that end ; speaking broadly, the conjugation of sperm- cells 
and germ-cells. In the next place, this effect is brought 
about in the most varied ways, and so, after much toil, the 
seed is finally produced, or the original end is realised. Is it 
possible to think otherwise than that this purpose is foreseen, 
predetermined, and that “ this predetermination conditions 
and dominates the series of phenomena of which it is in 
appearance the result? .... We maintain that what occurs 
as an effect becomes an end by reason of the number and 
