ems of nature, penetrating into the most occult causes, and
reducing to principle and order the vast multitude of beautiful and
wonderful phenomena by which the wisdom and benevolence of the Supreme
Deity regulates the course of the times and the seasons, robes the globe
with verdure and fruitfulness, and adapts it to minister to the wants,
and contribute to the felicity, of the innumerable tribes of animated
existence.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: From the "Transactions of the Meteorological Society,"
Vol. i., pp. 56-9 (London, 1839). The full title of the paper was
"Remarks on the Present State of Meteorological Science." The Society
was instituted in 1823, but appears to have published no previous
transactions.--ED.]

ON TREE TWIGS.[34]

284. The speaker's purpose was to exhibit the development of the common
forms of branch, in dicotyledonous trees, from the fixed type of the
annual shoot. Three principal modes of increase and growth might be
distinguished in all accumulative change, namely:--

1. Simple aggregation, having no periodical or otherwise defined limit,
and subject only to laws of cohesion and crystallization, as in
inorganic matter.

2. Addition of similar parts to each other, under some law fixing their
limits and securing their unity.

3. Enlargement, or systematic change in arrangement, of a typical form,
as in the growth of the members of an animal.

285. The growth of trees came under the second of these heads. A tree
did not increase in stem or boughs as the wrist and hand of a child
increased to the wrist and hand of a man; but it was built up by
additions of similar parts, as a city is increased by the building of
new rows of houses.

Any annual shoot was most conveniently to be considered as a single rod,
which would always grow vertically if possible.

Every such rod or pillar was, in common timber trees, typically either
polygonal in section, or rectangular.

If polygonal, the leaves were arranged on it in a spiral order, as in
the elm or oak.

If rectangular, the leaves were arranged on it in pairs, set alternately
at right angles to each other.

Intermediate forms connected each of these types with those of
monocotyledonous trees. The structure of the _arbor vitae_ might be
considered as typically representing the link between the rectangular
structure and that of monocotyledons; and that of the pine between the
polygonal structure and that o