Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

Such at least is the conclusion of one who, studying certain families of plants, which indulge in the most fantastic varieties of shape and size, and yet through all their vagaries retain— as do the Palms, the Orchids, the Euphorbiaceæ— one organ, or form of organs, peculiar and highly specialized, yet constant throughout the whole of each family, has been driven to the belief that each of these three families, at least, has “sported off” from one common ancestor— one archetypal Palm, one archetypal Orchid, one archetypal Euphorbia, simple, it may be, in itself, but endowed with infinite possibilities of new and complex beauty, to be developed, not in it, but in its descendants. He has asked himself, sitting alone amid the boundless wealth of tropic forests, whether even then and there the great God might not be creating round him, slowly but surely, new forms of beauty? If he chose to do it, could He not do it? That man found himself none the worse Christian for the thought.