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: who are we, that we should limit the power of God?
'Is anything too hard for the Lord ?' asked the prophet of old; and we have a right to ask it as long as time shall last.

If it be said that natural selection is too simple a cause to produce such fantastic variety: we always knew that God works by very simple, or seemingly simple, means; that the universe, as far as we could discern it, was one organisation of the most simple means; it was wonderful (or ought to have been) in our eyes, that a shower of rain should make the grass grow, and that the grass should become flesh, and the flesh food for the thinking brain of man; it was (or ought to have been) yet more wonderful in our eyes, that a child should resemble its parents, or even a butterfly resemble--if not always, still usually--its parents likewise.

Ought God to appear less or more august in our eyes if we discover that His means are even simpler than we supposed?
We hold Him to be almighty and allwise.

Are we to reverence Him less or more if we find that His might is greater, His wisdom deeper, than we had ever dreamed?
We believed that His care was over all His works; that His providence watched perpetually over the universe.

We were taught, some of us at least, by Holy Scripture, to believe that the whole history of the universe was made up of special providences: if, then, that should be true which Mr.Darwin says-- 'It may be metaphorically said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life,'-- if this, I say, were proved to be true, ought God's care, God's providence, to seem less or more magnificent in our eyes?
Of old it was said by Him without whom nothing is made--'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' Shall we quarrel with physical science, if she gives us evidence that these words are true?
And if it should be proven that the gigantic Hura and the lowly Spurge sprang from one common ancestor, what would the orthodox theologian have to say to it, saving--'I always knew that God was great: and I am not surprised to find Him greater than I thought Him'?
So much for the giant weed of the Morichal, from which we rode on and up through rolling country growing lovelier at every step, and turned out of our way to see wild pine-apples in a sandy spot, or 'Arenal' in a valley beneath.