tree. Independently of matter it has no existence, either objectively or
subjectively, or even as a metaphysical conception. To allege its
indestructibility, as the physicists do, is simply to predicate an
additional property of indestructible matter. We may call it
"force"--something that constantly expends itself in a moving body--but
it is utterly incapable of definition, or of conception even, except as
it stands related to such moving body. All the marvellous "correlates of
motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in
both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor
less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises
having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of
moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that
matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a
co-existent and wholly inexplicable "somewhat," whereon to base a purely
physical hypothesis of life.

But let us return from this slight digression. The beautiful and purely
local fern (_Schizoea pusilla_) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey,
affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis
of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was
at one time supposed that this most delicate and beautiful of all our
ferns was peculiar to the New Jersey pine barrens. But it has been
ascertained that it grows quite as abundantly in similar barrens in New
Zealand, which are in the south temperate zone, at about the same latitude
south, that these pine barrens of New Jersey occupy in the temperate zone
north. So that, at whatever period this fern originally made its
appearance in either locality, it unquestionably found the exact
thermometric, hygrometric, telluric, and other conditions necessary for
the development of its vital germs. Take any accurate, or even
half-accurate, chart of plant distribution on the earth's surface, and it