I believe, however, there is a large preponderance of the men of science,[52] at least in this country, who will be at one with me here. They acknowledge the almighty _fiat_ of God, as the energy which produced being; and they maintain that the specific character which He then stamped on his organic creation remains unchangeable. VI. LAWS. "----[Greek: ton trochon tes geneseos]."--JAMES iii. 6. The course of nature is a circle. I do not mean the _plan_ of nature; I am not speaking of a circular arrangement of species, genera, families, and classes, as maintained by MacLeay, Swainson, and others. Their theories may be true, or they may be false; I decide nothing concerning them; I am not alluding to any _plan_ of nature, but to its _course_, _cursus_,--the way in which it _runs on_. This is a circle. Here is in my garden a scarlet runner. It is a slender twining stem some three feet long, beset with leaves, with a growing bud at one end, and with the other inserted in the earth. What was it a month ago? A tiny shoot protruding from between two thick fleshy leaves scarcely raised above the ground. A month before that? The thick fleshy leaves were two oval cotyledons, closely appressed face to face, with the minute plumule between them, the whole enclosed in an unbroken, tightly-fitting, spotted, leathery coat. It was a bean, a seed. [Illustration: GERMINATION OF A SCARLET RUNNER. _a._ The ripe bean, showing the hilum at *; _b._ The same bean, with one cotyledon removed, to show the plumule. _c._ A similar bean, twenty-four hours after planting. _d._ The same, on the sixth day after planting. _e._ The same, on the twelfth day. _f._ The same, on the fourteenth day. N.B. From _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, the front cotyledon has been cut away, to show the progress of the plumule.] Was this the commencement of its existence? O no! Six months earlier still it was snugly lying, with several others like itself, in a green fleshy pod, to the interior of which it was organically attached. A month before that, this same pod with its contents was the centre of a scarlet butterfly-like flower, the bottom of its pistil, within which, if you had split it open, you would have discerned the tiny beans, whose history we are tracing backwards, each imbedded in the soft green tissue, but no bigger than the eye of a cambric needle. But where was this flower? It was one of many that glowed on my garden wall all through last summer; each cluster springing as a bud from a slender twining stem, which was the exact counterpart of that with which we commenced this little life-history.