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Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley
page 59 of 155 (38%)
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 Euphorbiaceae - 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. He has said - and must be allowed to
say again, for he sees no reason to alter his words - in speaking
of the wonderful variety of forms in the Euphorbiaceae, from the
weedy English Euphorbias, the Dog's Mercuries, and the Box, to the
prickly-stemmed Scarlet Euphorbia of Madagascar, the succulent
Cactus-like Euphorbias of the Canaries and elsewhere; the Gale-like
Phyllanthus; the many-formed Crotons; the Hemp-like Maniocs,
Physic-nuts, Castor-oils, the scarlet Poinsettia, the little pink
and yellow Dalechampia, the poisonous Manchineel, and the gigantic
Hura, or sandbox tree, of the West Indies, - all so different in
shape and size, yet all alike in their most peculiar and complex
fructification, and in their acrid milky juice,- "What if all these
forms are the descendants of one original form? Would that be one
whit the more wonderful than the theory that they were, each and
all, with the minute, and often imaginary, shades of difference
between certain cognate species among them, created separately and
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