The little that we know of Silurian plants is as eloquent of plan and creation as that which we can learn of animals. I saw not long ago a series of genealogies in geological time reduced to tabular form by that ingenious but imaginative physiologist, Haeckel. In one of these appeared the imaginary derivation of the higher plants from Algæ or sea-weeds. Nothing could more curiously contradict actual facts. Algæ were apparently in the Silurian neither more nor less elevated then in the modern seas, and those forms of vegetable life which may seem to bridge over the space between them and the land plants in the modern period, are wanting in the older geological periods, while land plants seem to start at once into being in the guise of club-mosses, a group by no means of low standing. Our oldest land plants thus represent one of the highest types of that cryptogamous series to which they belong, and moreover are better developed examples of that type then those now existing. We may say, if we please, that all the connecting links have been lost; but this is begging the whole question, since no thing 'but the existence of such links could render the hypothesis of derivation possible. Further, the occurrence of any number of successive yet distinct species would not be the kind of chain required, or rather would not be a chain at all.
Yet in some respects development is obvious in creation. Old forms of life are often embryonic, or resemble the young of modern animals, but enlarged and exaggerated, as if they had overgrown themselves and had prematurely become adult. Old forms are often generalized, or less specific in their adaptations then those of modern times. There is less division of labour among them. Old forms sometimes not only rise to the higher places in their groups, but usurp attributes which in later times are restricted to their betters. Old forms are often gigantic in size in comparison with their modern successors, which, if they could look back on their predecessors, might say, "There were giants in those days." Some old forms have gone onward in successive stages of elevation by a regular and constant gradation. Others have remained as they were through all the ages, Some have no equals in their groups in modern days. All these things speak of order, but of order along with development, and this development not evolution; unless by this term we understand the emergence into material facts of the plans of the creative mind. These plans we may hope in some degree to understand, though we may not be able to comprehend the mode of action of creative power any more then the mode in which our own thought and will act upon the machinery of our own nerves. Still, the power is not the less real, that we are ignorant of its mode of operation. The wind bloweth whither it listeth, and we feel its strength, though we may not be able to calculate the wind of to-morrow or the winds of last year. So is the Spirit of God when it breathes into animals the breath of life, or the Almighty word when it says, "Let the waters bring forth."