force holding together the particles of bodies, so as to make them solid. But all these pretty shapes add nothing to this intelligible use. Why then are they there? They are there, it would seem, for their own sake;--because they are pretty;--symmetry and beauty are there on their own account; or because they are universal adjuncts of the general laws by which the creator works. Or rather we may say, combining different branches of our knowledge, that crystallization is the mark and accompaniment of chemical composition: and that as chemical composition takes place according to definite numbers, so crystalline aggregation takes place according to definite forms. The symmetrical relations of space in crystals correspond to the simple relations of number in synthesis; and thus, because there is rule, there is regularity, and regularity assumes the form of beauty. 28. This, which thus shows itself throughout the mineral kingdom, or, speaking more widely and truly, throughout the whole range of chemical composition, is still more manifest in the vegetable domain. All the vast array of flowers, so infinitely various, and so beautiful in their variety, are the results of a few general laws; and show, in the degree of their symmetry, the alternate operation of one law and another. The rose, the lily, the cowslip, the violet, differ in something of the same way, in which the crystalline forms of the several gems differ. Their parts are arranged in fives or in threes, in pentagons or in hexagons, and in these regular forms, one part or another is expanded or contracted, rendered conspicuous by color or by shape, so as to produce all the multiplicity of beauty which the florist admires. Or rather, in the eye of the philosophical botanist, the whole of the structure of plants, with all their array of stems and leaves, blossoms and fruits, is but the manifestation of one Law; and all these members of the vegetable form, are, in their natures, the same, developed more or less in this way or in that. The daisy consists of a close cluster of flowers of which each has, in its form, the rudiments of the valerian. The peablossom is a rose, with some of its petals expanded into butterfly-like wings. Even without changing the species, this general law leads to endless changes. The garden-rose is the common hedge-rose with innumerable filaments changed into glowing petals. By the addition of whorl to whorl, of vegetable coronet over coronet, green and colored, broad and narrow, filmy and rigid, every plant is generated, and the glory of the field and of the garden, of the jungle and of the forest, is brought forth in all its magnificence. Here, then, we have an immeasurable wealth of beauty and regularity, brought to view by the operation of a single law. And to what use? What purpose do these beauties answer? What is the object for which the lilies of the field are clothed so gaily and gorgeously? Some plants, indeed, are