t and almost useless, save for
firing; and the tree itself, botanists tell us, is neither more nor
less than a gigantic Spurge, the cousin-german of the milky garden
weeds with which boys burn away their warts. But if the modern
theory be true, that when we speak (as we are forced to speak) of
the relationships of plants, we use no metaphor, but state an actual
fact; that the groups into which we are forced to arrange them
indicate not merely similarity of type, but community of descent--
then how wonderful is the kindred between the Spurge and the Hura--
indeed, between all the members of the Euphorbiaceous group, so
fantastically various in outward form; so abundant, often huge, in
the Tropics, while in our remote northern island their only
representatives are a few weedy Spurges, two Dog's Mercuries--weeds
likewise--and the Box. Wonderful it is if only these last have had
the same parentage--still more if they have had the same parentage,
too, with forms so utterly different from them as the prickly-
stemmed scarlet-flowered Euphorbia common in our hothouses; as the
huge succulent cactus-like Euphorbia of the Canary Islands; as the
gale-like Phyllanthus; the many-formed Crotons, which in the West
Indies alone comprise, according to Griesbach, at least twelve
genera and thirty species; the hemp-like Maniocs, Physic-nuts,
Castor-oils; the scarlet Poinsettia which adorns dinner-tables in
winter; the pretty little pink and yellow Dalechampia, now common in
hothouses; the Manchineel, with its glossy poplar-like leaves; and
this very Hura, with leaves still more like a poplar, and a fruit
which differs from most of its family in having not three but many
divisions, usually a multiple of three up to fifteen; a fruit which
it is difficult to obtain, even where the tree is plentiful: for
hanging at the end of long branches, it bursts when ripe with a
crack like a pistol, scattering its seeds far and wide: from whence
its name of Hura crepitans.

But what if all these forms are the descendants of one original
form? Would that be one whit more wonderful, more inexplicable,
than the theory that they were each and all, with their minute and
often imaginary shades of difference, created separately and at
once? But if it be--which I cannot allow--what can the theologian
say, save that God's works are even more wonderful than we always
believed them to be? As for the theory being impossible: