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.  The meeting of the stiff marl and the fine sand was abrupt, and well marked by the vegetation.  On one side of the ravine the tall fan-leaved Carats marked the rich soil; on the other, the sand and gravel loving Cocorites appeared at once, crowding their ostrich plumes together.  Most of them were the common species of the island {202a} in which the pinnae of the leaves grow in fours and fives, and at different angles from the leaf-stalk, giving the whole a brushy appearance, which takes off somewhat from the perfectness of its beauty.  But among them we saw--for the first and last time in the forest—­a few of a far more beautiful species, {202b} common on the mainland.  In it, the pinnae are set on all at the same distance apart, and all in the same plane, in opposite sides of the stalk, giving to the whole foliage a grand simplicity; and producing, when the curving leaf-points toss in the breeze, that curious appearance, which I mentioned in an earlier chapter, of green glass wheels with rapidly revolving spokes.  At their feet grew the pine-apples, only in flower or unripe fruit, so that we could not quench our thirst with them, and only looked with curiosity at the small wild type of so famous a plant.  But close by, and happily nearly ripe, we found a fair substitute for pine-apples in the fruit of the Karatas.  This form of Bromelia, closely allied to the Pinguin of which hedges are made, bears a straggling plume of prickly leaves, six or eight feet long each, close to the ground.  The forester looks for a plant in which the leaves droop outwards—­a sign that the fruit is ripe.  After beating it cautiously (for snakes are very fond of coiling under its shade) he opens the centre, and finds, close to the ground, a group of whitish fruits, nearly two inches long; peels carefully off the skin, which is beset with innumerable sharp hairs, and eats the sour-sweet refreshing pulp:  but not too often, for there are always hairs enough left to make the tongue bleed if more than one or two are eaten.