Glaucus, or the Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley
page 59 of 155 (38%)
page 59 of 155 (38%)
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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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