ve
Sciences_, there are several passages in the _Bridgewater Treatise_
which show a glimmering idea of such a possibility. Of these the
following are, perhaps, worth quoting. Speaking of the adaptation
of the period of flowering to the length of a year, he says:--

"Now such an adjustment must surely be accepted as a proof of
design, exercised in the formation of the world. Why should the
solar year be so long and no longer? or, this being such a length,
why should the vegetable cycle be exactly of the same length? Can
this be chance?... And, if not by chance, how otherwise could such
a coincidence occur than by an intentional adjustment of these two
things to one another; by a selection of such an organization in
plants as would fit them to the earth on which they were to grow;
by an adaptation of construction to conditions; of the scale of
construction to the scale of conditions? It cannot be accepted as
an explanation of this fact in the economy of plants, that it is
necessary to their existence; that no plants could possibly have
subsisted, and come down to us, except those which were thus
suited to their place on the earth. This is true; but it does not
at all remove the necessity of recurring to design as the origin of
the construction by which the existence and continuance of plants
is made possible. A watch could not go unless there were the most
exact adjustment in the forms and positions of its wheels; yet no
one would accept it as an explanation of the origin of such forms
and positions that the watch would not go if these were other than
they were. If the objector were to suppose that plants were
originally fitted to years of various lengths, and that such only
have survived to the present time as had a cycle of a length equal
to our present year, or one which could be accommodated to it, we
should reply that the assumption is too gratuitous and extravagant
to require much consideration."

Again, with regard to "the diurnal period," he adds:--

"Any supposition that the astronomical cycle has occasioned the
physiological one, that the structure of plants has been brought to
be what it is by the action of external causes, or that such plants
as could not accommodate themselves to the existing day have
perished, would be not only a