hey are compacted out of light, air, and water, each after
its kind? How, again, those kinds began to be, and what they were
like at first? Whether those crowded, struggling, competing shapes
are stable or variable? Whether or not they are varying still?
Whether even now, as we sit here, the great God may not be creating,
slowly but surely, new forms of beauty round us? Why not? If He
chose to do it, could He not do it? And even had you answered that
question, which would require whole centuries of observation as
patient and accurate as that which Mr. Darwin employed on Orchids
and climbing plants, how much nearer would you be to the deepest
question of all--Do these things exist, or only appear? Are they
solid realities, or a mere phantasmagoria, orderly indeed, and law-
ruled, but a phantasmagoria still; a picture-book by which God
speaks to rational essences, created in His own likeness? And even
had you solved that old problem, and decided for Berkeley or against
him, you would still have to learn from these forests a knowledge
which enters into man, not through the head, but through the heart;
which (let some modern philosophers say what they will) defies all
analysis, and can be no more defined or explained by words than a
mother's love. I mean, the causes and the effects of their beauty;
that 'AEsthetic of plants,' of which Schleiden has spoken so well in
that charming book of his, The Plant, which all should read who wish
to know somewhat of 'The Open Secret.'

But when they read it, let them read with open hearts. For that
same 'Open Secret' is, I suspect, one of those which God may hide
from the wise and prudent, and yet reveal to babes.

At least, so it seemed to me, the first day that I went, awe struck,
into the High Woods; and so it seemed to me, the last day that I
came, even more awe-struck, out of them.

CHAPTER VIII: LA BREA

We were, of course, desirous to visit that famous Lake of Pitch,
which our old nursery literature described as one of the 'Wonders of
the World.' It is not that; it is merely a very odd, quaint,
unexpected, and only half-explained phenomenon: but no wonder.
That epithet should be kept for such matters as the growth of a
crystal, the formation of a cell, the germination of a seed, the
coming true of a plant, whether from a fruit or from a cutting: in
a word, for any and all those hourly and momentary miracles which
were