and squirrels result in the planting of many oaks and chestnuts and beeches. The inherent tendency to variation in organic life, together with Nature’s hit-and-miss method, account for her endless variety on the same plane, as it were, as that of her many devices for disseminating her seeds. One plan of hook or barb serves as well as another,--that of bidens as well as that of hound’s-tongue,--yet each has a pattern of its own. The same may be said of the leaves of the trees: their function is to expose the juices of the tree to the chemical action of light and air; yet behold what an endless variety in their shape, size, and structure! This is the way of the Infinite--to multiply endlessly, to give a free rein to the physical forces and let them struggle with one another for the stable equilibrium to which they never, as a whole, attain; to give the same free rein to the organic forces and let their various forms struggle with one another for the unstable equilibrium which is the secret of their life. The many contingencies that wait upon the circuit of the physical forces and determine the various forms of organic matter--rocks, sand, soil, gravel, mountain, plain--all shifting and changing endlessly--wait upon the circuit of the organic forces and turn the life-impulse into myriad channels, and people the earth with myriads of living forms, each accidental from our limited point of view, while all are determined by irrefragable laws. The contradictions in such statements are obvious and are inevitable when the finite tries to measure or describe the ways of the Infinite. The waters of the globe are forever seeking the repose of a dead level, but when they attain it, if they ever do, the world will be dead. Behold what a career they have in their circuit from the sea to the clouds and back to the earth in the ministering rains, and then to the sea again through the streams and rivers! The mantling snow with its exquisite crystals, the grinding and transporting glaciers, the placid or plowing and turbulent rivers, the sparkling and refreshing streams, the cooling and renewing dews, the softening and protecting vapors, wait upon this circuit of the waters through the agency of the sun, from the sea, through the sky and land, back to the sea again. Yes, and all the myriad forms of life also. This circuit of the waters drives and sustains all the vital machinery of the globe. Why and how the sun and the rain bring the rose and the violet, the peach and the plum, the wheat and the rye, and the boys and the girls, out of the same elements and conditions that they bring the thistles and the tares, the thorn and the scrub, the fang and the sting, the monkey and the reptile, is the insoluble mystery.