Their singular aspect, and their being drawn with absolute geometrical precision, as if they were the work of rule or compass, has led some to see in them the work of intelligent beings, inhabitants of the planet. I am very careful not to combat this supposition, which includes nothing impossible. (Io mi guarderò bene dal combattere questa supposizione, la quale nulla include d'impossibile.) But it will be noticed that in any case the gemination cannot be a work of permanent character, it being certain that in a given instance it may change its appearance and dimensions from one season to another. If we should assume such a work, a certain variability would not be excluded from it; for example, extensive agricultural labor and irrigation upon a large scale. Let us add, further, that the intervention of intelligent beings might explain the geometrical appearance of the gemination, but it is not at all necessary for such a purpose. The geometry of nature is manifested in many other facts from which are excluded the idea of any artificial labor whatever. The perfect spheroids of the heavenly bodies and the ring of Saturn were not constructed in a turning lathe, and not with compasses has Iris described within the clouds her beautiful and regular arch. And what shall we say of the infinite variety of those exquisite and regular polyhedrons in which the world of crystals is so rich? In the organic world, also, is not that geometry most wonderful which presides over the distribution of the foliage upon certain plants, which orders the nearly symmetrical, star-like figures of the flowers of the field, as well as of the sea, and which produces in the shell such an exquisite conical spiral that excels the most beautiful masterpieces of Gothic architecture? In all these objects the geometrical form is the simple and necessary consequence of the principles and laws which govern the physical and physiological world. That these principles and these laws are but an indication of a higher intelligent Power we may admit, but this has nothing to do with the present argument.